National Cranberry Cooperative Case Study Adam Christensen
Q. How might transport vehicles be utilized more effectively? Should crews
be scheduled differently on peak days? Be sure to substantiate all calculations.
Executive Summary: Answering the question of transportation of goods and
scheduling of personnel is a key question that leadership must always address when
making business decisions. In this case ultimately biggest thing to do is schedule more
bagging crews in the bagging station during peak days. They also need to use the fourth
bagging station during peak hours to increase efficiency. Too much processing time is
lost by trucks sitting and waiting instead of being unloaded and allowing the process to
continue.
By using more bagging crews during peak days and taking advantage of the
fourth bagging station they could increase production by 2667 bbls per machine in a
standard 12 hour period. They can increase efficiency with transport by assigning more
crews during the peak hours. It only takes 5 to 10 minutes to unload a truck, however
backups would occur with getting the unloading crew to unload into a Kiwanne dumper,
or having the dumper itself be full, causing wait times in excess of 3 hours. By utilizing
additional crews they can minimize those waits and increase efficiency.
The backup is not occurring in the receiving station itself, it appears to be
happening in the bagging station. Instead of using the fourth station as a spare, they’d be
better off putting it to work in the peak hours of processing. By doing this you allow an
additional 10667 bbls per shift to be processed just because of the additional unit. This
greatly impacts overall efficiency. This fourth crew will also decrease the wait time for
the trucks arriving, which adds a great deal of cost for no production. As the trucks sit
there is an overall cost even if no work is being done.
The thing to watch here is the amount of overtime to the crews. Properly
managing the schedule so that the shifts are met, but people aren’t having to be paid
overtime. This also helps to manage the absenteeism problem that they’ve faced as
people are gainfully employed are more likely to show up to work and perform. This too
will greatly impact the overall bottom line of the cooperative. This is a harder point to
quantify, but has to be considered when making business decisions.
Calculations::
