IT560 Unit 4 Assignment Cecil Williams Kaplan University IT560 Unit 4 Assignment Part A - Case Study III-3 Make-or-Buy Decision at Baxter Manufacturing Company 1. What are the arguments in favor of Manufacturing Vice President Moore’s proposal to purchase the manufacturing software from EMS? Moore argues that Baxter Manufacturing Company (BMC) is losing it’s reputation as a world-class parts manufacturer and is therefore implying that the company will lose business unless they purchase the manufacturing software. Moore also thinks that the manufacturing software will improve their manufacturing efficiency and customer service. The vendor, Effective Management Solutions (EMS), has told Moore that the entire system can be up and running in six months, where the estimated time to build an in-house system is two years.
This means that they could adopt a computerised accounting system to deal with financial transactions and many staff can help them do this these transactions. Computerised Accounting system can benefit them because they can do all their calculations in the computer which helps them to do their work quickly. Rumble is a small business so they will have less staff. On the other hand If Rumble did not have many staffs this means they won’t need to adopt a computerised accounting system because it is too expensive and also manual accounting system could help them instead if they had less staff. In this case Manual accounting system is easier for them to handle with their calculations through sales day book, petty cashbook and cashbook.
Case 1: Stryker Corporation: In-sourcing PCBs Track: MB51 Group Members Ren Wang, Yangfan Chen, Yue Lin, and Ruoping Lin 1. Benefits: 1) It will be easier for Stryker to maintain or even improve the quality of the PCBs with its full control over the production. Besides, Stryker do not need to spend too much time on waiting for the delivery and communicating with their suppliers 2) The supply of the PCBs will be much more stable since the current suppliers suffer from the risk of bankruptcy or financial weakness 3) The production of the PCBs will be much more flexible for Stryker, because they can adjust the production amount based on their own sales of main products. Therefore they will suffer less from over inventory. 4) It’s probable that the Stryker will be able to decrease the cost over a long period because they buy the raw materials on their own.
The fabrication phases and the assembly and test phase consist of their own procedures. Nowadays manufacturing process becomes more and more technologically diverse and intense. It results in a decrease in a direct labor percentage of total manufacturing cost. Management considered that an inaccuracy of GEI’s standard cost system caused a poor financial performance. The company need find a better cost system which could truly track costs and identify which of products were profitable and which were not.
Layout Strategy: The three bays are designed specifically for lubrication and vacuuming tasks to minimize wasted movement on the part of the employees and to contribute to the speedier service. Supply Chain Strategy: Purchasing is facilitated by negotiation of large purchases and custom packaging. Human Resources Strategy: Human resources strategy focuses on hiring a few employees with limited skills and training them in a limited number of tasks during the performance of which they can be closely supervised. Inventory: Inventory investment should be relatively low, and they should expect a high turnover. Scheduling: Scheduling is quite straightforward with similar times for most cars.
Mantkelow (2014) explains lean manufacturing as based on "finding inefficiencies and removing wasteful steps that don't add value to the end product." Lean operations helps to reduce waste in production by using resources to only produce what the customer is demanding. A company that is using lean operations has measurable throughput. “Every minute that a product is not sold the cost accumulates and the competitive advantage is lost, this is the manufacturing cycle time” (Heizer and Render, 2010) this analysis could have been used to scale down production in the third and fourth quarter when it became obvious there was excess inventory. For starters, there is no value in holding 60 days' worth of inventory, to adopting lean principles would immediately help us to commit to inventory reduction and better alignment between production and demand.
When it came to this theory workers were punished and rewarded. This approach appeared to work well for organizations with assembly lines and other mechanistic, routinized activities.”(Carter McNamara, 2009) Also, Taylor was known as the “father of management thought.” He developed four principles to increase efficiency in the workplace based on his own experience and observations as a manufacturing manager (George, 2009, p.43). “According to Taylor, management needed to do three things to increase productivity (and thus profits). First, the most efficient tools and procedures had to be developed and applied. Here, Taylor relied on so called time and motion studies, which concentrated on identifying the most economical set of physical movement associated with each step of a work process.
Credit gave people time to pay off the cost of the product. Henry Ford was the first factory owner who believed that if he payed his workers more they would be happier and work would be superior, he raised their wages to $5 a day. In 1925 having industrious workers Ford was able to create an assembly line, for his Model T cars, to be built every 24 seconds. This mindless and fast repetitive work rather than the slow work by skilled craftsmen was less expensive for factory workers and allowed for an increase in affordable consumer goods. Scientific management and time-motion studies created a greater knowledge of production.
Case Analysis #1 “Will GM's Strategic Plan Lead to Future Success?" (1) I would have to say that GM is a defender. Even though they downsized a lot of their operations, the company still managed to re-claim their title from Toyota. General Motors are experts at what they make and I am sure they would use the slogan “We're sticking with the basics.” GM is focusing their planning on cutting down the number of platforms they use in order to better save money. They can save money because with fewer platforms, they are able to cut out more of the engineering aspects of the company.
Benefits: * elimination of set-up errors and improved quality * decreased set-up times with associated reduction in production time and improved production capacity * simplified and improved housekeeping * increased safety * lower costs * lower skill requirements * increased production flexibility * improved operator attitudes. (Poka-yoke helps people and processes work right the first time. Poka-yoke refers to techniques that make it impossible to make mistakes. These techniques can drive defects out of products and processes and substantially improve quality and reliability. It can be thought of as an extension of FMEA.