Introduction
Kibby and Strand is holding its quarterly production meeting and discussing upcoming contracts and forecasts for future work. The operations manager (you) expresses concern that marketing is promising deliver dates to customers too quickly, and production may not be able to make those dates. The CEO replies, “having too many contracts is a good problem to have, so figure out how we meet those dates.” As you leave the meeting, you are saying to yourself, “If the CEO thinks it is easy then let her come down on the operations floor and see what I have to go through to produce and deliver products.”
This scenario is realistic. Not all CEOs are going to have personal experience in the day-to-day details required to manage operations. Many CEOs come up through marketing or the accounting /financial departments of a company and they never worked in production. In some cases, you have individuals who never worked in the company at all prior to being named CEO. Take John Sculley for example. He was the CEO of Apple from 1983-1993, and prior to that he was the president of Pepsi. Talk about different industries! Do you think Scully had detailed knowledge of how to manufacture computers or the culture prevalent in an IT company like Apple? The evidence would indicate he did not. Scully fired Steve Jobs, so that shows how different his business philosophies were from those of the Apple founder. The point being made is that often you find yourself in a situation where you know your job better than your leadership. If that happens embrace the opportunity. You are the expert, so show them you know how to get things done.
In this unit’s discussion you will have the opportunity to establish the production schedule based on incoming contracts, and forecast production. You will be making lots of decisions and there are impacts. Not all decisions are “Win-Win”. Some will be “Win-Lose” and the most onerous ones are “Lose-Lose”, in other words there is not a good outcome.
Source:
Today in Apple history: John Sculley brings ‘Pepsi Generation’ marketing to Apple (Links to an external site.)
Unit Learning Outcomes
Prepare a strategy for capacity planning for an organization. (CLO 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7)
Analyze the risks to an organization resulting from a poorly designed process flow. (CLO 2, 6, and 7)
Examine considerations for optimizing facility layout of an organization. (CLO 2, 6, and 7)
Evaluate the impact of facility layout on process efficiency and suggest changes to improve operational outcomes. (CLO 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7)
Directions
Accessing McGraw-Hill Connect
Follow these steps to view the scenario.
Initial Posting
Go to McGraw-Hill Practice Operations to view the scenario.
Click the “McGraw-Hill Connect” tab in the course navigation menu.
Click the McGraw-Hill Practice Operations link.
Students are to complete Module 5, The New Branch (Scenario) in Practice Operations. Based on their observations in this scenario, and upon a careful review of the available literature, the student is to consider him or herself to be the Production Manager of Kibby and Strand, the company in the scenario.
Formulate a scheduling methodology evaluation matrix for managing Kibby and Strand production based on incoming contracts. Specifically, the matrix should consider each of the scheduling methodologies discussed in Chapters 5, 6, and Table 16.3 on page 702 of the textbook, and evaluate their utility based on how Kibby and Strand runs its operations. Also prepare a Gantt chart demonstrating how the methodology of choice would sequence five pending contracts. You can come up with the contract due dates. Next, prepare a memo to the COO explaining the production scheduling methodology you’re recommending along with justification. Basically you’re asking the COO to approve your recommendation.
This matrix, Gantt chart, and memo should be prepared as a single Microsoft™ Word document, and then attached to the unit discussion thread. There is no minimum or maximum in terms of the word count; however, the response should explicitly address all required components of this discussion assignment. The document should be prepared consistent with the APA writing style and reflect higher level cognitive processing (analysis, synthesis and or evaluation).
Instruction Guidance: It would be prudent to consider content covered in chapters 5 and 6 of the textbook; however, there are many other useful resources available on the Internet and in the literature to support the construction of your action plan.
This plan should be prepared as a Microsoft™ Word document, and then attached to the unit discussion thread. There is no minimum or maximum in terms of the word count; however, the response should explicitly address all required components of this discussion assignment. The document should be prepared consistent with the APA writing style and reflect higher level cognitive processing (analysis, synthesis and or evaluation).
