Question: Eastern Gear is a company that traditionally produced custom gears in small lots, and has recently been given the opportunity to begin producing larger volumes of gears per order. This is a typical small job shop which is owner operated. In addition, Eastern Gear has experienced a large increase in sales which is causing major problems in operations. Because of the wide range of problems presented, the case permits an overview of a job shop type of operation and practice at looking at the entire scope of operations including objectives, capacity, production and inventory control, organization, and quality.
1. What are the major problems being faced by Eastern Gear?
2. What action should Mr. Rhodes take to solve his problems?
3. How can this case be related to operations strategy and process design concepts?