Quadrant Homes Case

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Quadrant Homes Case 1. How is Quadrant demonstrating the practice Design-for-Assembly? In the Design-for-Assembly approach Quadrant has adopted, their architects keeps in mind simplicity and time-task requirements when they create new designs. This means that the architects know what materials are available on a ready basis for the construction and what their suppliers supply capabilities are. They don’t put unnecessary design elements which would have any delaying effect on the 54 day construction time. Quadrant practices DFA in collaboration with their suppliers. Without this collaboration, the DFA process would not work. Quadrant gives a 10 day advanced notice to its suppliers about the materials needed for construction. This is shown in the given case with the example of the wood supplier. What the supplier does is do most of the work in the factory itself, like making the wall panels, the flooring etc., and then bring the finished products ready for assembly at the construction site. This means that, as assembly on site could be done in a minimal time, no wastage of time happens on site. This DFA approach was the main reason how Quadrant could reduce the average throughput time from 135 days to 54 days. 2. Why do they want to employ mixed-mode sequencing? Quadrant currently closes 6 houses a day. They start building these 6 houses a day. They have a fixed deadline – 54 days. To balance the load, they use a mixed mode sequencing system. In this system, they seek a complementary mix of workload characteristics. They mix up houses with more customization with those with less customization so that workload get balanced. In such a situation, they could allocate specialized crew to some site without any other site having to be put on wait for that particular crew. Otherwise, if they start 2 or more houses with same set of special customizations,
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