ANALYSIS

Review the scenario at beginning of the assignment list.

As the company examines various methods to assess its performance and design processes, it is looking for an analysis of the existing workflow production process and the factors that most directly impact such measurements. As a review, the most common metrics for production processes are as follows:

•Quality: the number of defects associated with a given product
•Cost: material and labor cost
•Timeliness: how quickly products are manufactured and delivered
•Flexibility: the degree to which the production process can be adapted to produce other products or specific products more quickly
•Productivity: a ratio of outputs divided by inputs
•Efficiency: a ratio of actual outputs divided by standard (or expected) outputs, multiplied by 100% to give a total efficiency percentage
•Cycle time: the total time it takes to complete a production process
•Theory of Constraints and Queuing Theory

Using course materials and other research, complete the following:
•Explain how each measure can be applied to the company’s production planning process. Can the company use each one? How?
•Rank the criteria listed above in order of importance to the company’s production planning strategy detailing your rationale for such a ranking.
•Identify other measures that might apply to the company and explain them
Scenario ip 2
Scenario:

A specialty memory chip manufacturer is located in Southern California with manufacturing plants located in the United States, Europe, Singapore, and Japan. Additionally, it has branch sales offices located in major metropolitan areas across the globe. The market for its six key products included original equipment manufacturers of personal computers, cellular telephone manufacturers, electronics distributors, and government organizations. The market environment for its products is extremely volatile with fluctuating demand and rapidly changing prices. The company uses short-term contracts (less than 1 month) and spot pricing for irregular customers. Internally, the operation is capital-intensive with depreciation running approximately $1.2 million per day (depreciation has an impact on revenue streams). The 6 key products had further specialized components, making the possible line mix total 24 distinct products. Further, the manufacturing process required high manufacturing lead times and various product yields. In the high technology memory arena, product life cycles were dramatically shortened because of rapid obsolescence. To coordinate the manufacturing activity, the company has an established process and system that helped optimize resource utilization, improve shop floor efficiencies, and manage customer demand.