Space Age Furniture Company

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Space Age Furniture Company manufactures various styles and sizes of microwave and portable television cabinets. These cabinets, which vary slightly in design, follow the same basic production and assembly operation. Out of the many variations of these stands, two require a component (no. 3079) to be manufactured on a specialized lathing machine. This component is part of another subassembly required in these two cabinets. This machine is designed to only produce this component and runs virtually unattended after the initial set up. (Vonderembse & White, et. al, 2013) Ed Szewczak, a long time machinist with Space Age, sets up and monitors the specialty lathe as well as other machines within the facility. In recent months, there has been an increase in demand for the specialty part to be produced. This increase in workload has allowed Szewczak’s usual 40-hour workweek to increase, to include overtime. The extra time is needed to finish the amount of lathed parts demanded by the customer orders. This increase in hours per week has made Szewczak become dissatisfied with his position and give cause for the operations manager, Carol Snodgrass, to rethink her production strategies. In the following pages, I will examine the operational processes, the inventory system, the efficiency of the facility and ways it can be realigned. In doing this the facility will increase production, decrease costs, and increase the level of satisfaction of the staff. There are several options available to Snodgrass in an attempt to solve the issues of Space Age manufacturing processes and improve efficiency. The first is to discover a way to retain a low level of inventory of the components and/or subassemblies, also known as safety stock (Unknown, n.d.), to maintain the fulfillment of customer orders. By retaining this safety stock, there is a cushion of time between the anticipated and

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