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National Cranberry Cooperative Essay

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Executive Summary Operations Management Introduction As a leader in the fruit industry, National Cranberry Cooperative (NCC) is ready to take on some changes in order to increase efficiency in its operation. The entire process flow by which cranberries enter, move, and exit Receiving Plant No. 1 (RP1) can be improved by tweaking certain stages of the overall operation. Such improvements will reduce the expensive overtime costs that have been incurred and reduce the waiting time for inbound delivery trucks, hence, enabling the plant operate at more normal business hours and increase the overall profitability of NCC. Problems After running a process flow [see Exhibit 2], it becomes apparent that a main bottleneck exists at the …show more content…

It can be seen at the Dryers that, since they only pass 600 bbls through per hour, a backup occurs and ends up forcing the subsequent processes to back up and ultimately makes the day last until the very end of the allowed time for the plant to remained opened (22-hour window takes us up until 9:00 AM the next morning – in reality, we needed one more hour to complete the entire cycle, but we didn’t have it so we lost 84 bbls; this is what we are trying to avoid, not only because of the waste, but also because of the amount of overtime we need to pay for workers to stay around. Solutions In order to remedy the backlog at the Dryer area, it is recommended that one (1) extra Dryer be purchases, and not two (2) as was suggested by Will Walliston. Since the Separators (capacity of 1,200 bbls) are too big and expensive to improve upon or replicate, NCC should increase the capacity of the Dryer process so 1,200 Wet Berries (double) can be passed on to the Separators instead the current 600 bbls (filling up its capacity with Wet berries is ideal since Dry Berries can sit overnight). The bigger overall solution, though, is to start the plant’s operations at 7:00 AM instead of 11:00 AM, and this will be the basis for most of the following analysis [see Exhibit 7]. If employees start coming in at 7:00 AM and work eight-hour shifts, RP1 will be much better off and will be able to not only limit overtime costs, but

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