Task:
Production process improvement: lean and JIT
In your role as Manychip's production planning staff member, one of your tasks is to help the supply chain team focus on capacity planning. One of the key production plants in the supply chain currently uses a lead capacity strategy in which they make enough chips to offset demand even when this means excess inventory levels at times.
Using course materials and other research:
1. Define the lead, lag, and match strategy for capacity planning.
2. Recommend a better strategy for the Manychip's production strategy, outlining the advantages of your proposal. Should they change from the lead strategy or not?
3. Comment on other postings by critiquing the other proposals and suggesting aspects of your classmates' plans that may have been overlooked.
In your own words, please post a response to the Discussion Board and comment on other postings. You will be graded on the quality of your postings.
Review scenario at beginning of 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 costs
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:
1. Explain how each measure can be applied to Manychip's production planning process - can the company use each one? How?
2. Rank the criteria listed above in order of importance to Manychip's production planning strategy, detailing your rationale for such a ranking.
3. Identify other measures that might apply to Manychip and explain them.