National Cranberries Essay

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In 2005, the plant’s overtime costs were high and the trucks spent too much time waiting to unload the process fruit onto the dumpers. The reason was that the plant could process less fruit than it received resulting in holding bins that were always full leading to long waiting time for the trucks. Also, because of the increase in water harvesting of the cranberries, new schedules for operations had to be drawn up. Another issue was the grade selection of the berries. Half the grade 3 berries were actually grade 2B resulting in revenue and time loss. Daily maintenance activities prevented round the clock operations within the facility and lead to a production loss of 2 hours/day. 2) Draw a process flow diagram of the cranberry process beginning with receiving and ending with the Bailey Mills (i.e., ignore Sorting and Shipping at the end of the process). 3) Compute the capacity in barrels per hour for each step. Temporary Holding Bins for dry= (16 bins) x (250 bbls) = 4,000 bbls Bins for wet=(3 bins) x (400 bbls) = 1,200 bbls Bins for both=(8 bins) x (250 bbls) = 2,000 bbls Total Capacity = 7,200 bbls Destoning (for dry only) Total Capacity = (3 machines) x (1,500 bbls/hr) = 4,500 bbls/hr Dechaffing Wet= (2 machines) x (1,500 bbls/hr) = 3,000 bbls/hr Dry= (1 machines) x (1,500 bbls/hr) = 1,500 bbls/hr Total Capacity = 3,000 bbls/hr + 1,500 bbls/hr = 4,500 bbls/hr Drying (for wet only) Total Capacity = (3 machines) x (200 bbls/hr) = 600 bbls/hr Separator Total Capacity = (3 machines) x (400 bbls/hr) = 1,200 bbls/hr 4) Consider a peak harvest day (19,000 barrels of berries unloaded with 70% of them wet harvested). Assume that trucks arrive uniformly over a period of 12 hours. Identify the bottleneck for the process. Max. number of barrels unloaded during peak harvest = 19,000 Wet harvest = 70% x 19,000 = 13,300 bbls Rate of

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