Cell Design and Future State Map - Essay Example

Using the understanding of these areas of concern, the Manufacturing Director devises a comprehensive new strategy to address the organizational issues facing the company. In this document, a Cellular Manufacturing system of production is proposed for implementation as Crockwood Seat Suppliers’ new workflow system. Finally, the importance of prioritizing the actions to be taken is highlighted.IntroductionBackgroundRockwood Seat Suppliers is a firm that supplies car seats to various OEM manufacturers and to aftermarket auto-parts dealers.

It has been providing the service to its customers since 1973, however, a present-day workforce of two hundred employees demonstrates that it has not been able to expand the way most present companies that originated so long ago have. The company has recently suffered great losses and is in danger of having to shed almost forty-five percent of its workforce in twelve months according to the current trend because of dwindling customer demand. The manufacturer has contracts with two other firms, namely Lanchester Steels Ltd and Coventry Covers, for the supply of the two required raw materials – sheet metal and seat cover rolls.

All production processes of the vehicle seats are performed at the company’s shop floor except for plating for which the company contracts a metalworks firm as it does not have the capability.In the previous part of the project, the Manufacturing Director assessed the current state of working of Crockwood Seat Suppliers. He was appointed to improve the fortunes of the company which was losing not only money but also customers due to the inefficiencies in its functioning. The two main areas of concern for the customer with regard to the company CSS are firstly the enormous lead time which means that the customer has to wait around 51 days from the placement of the order for the delivery; this is unacceptable not only for a majority of large-scale automotive manufacturers but also for, the smaller-scale, spare parts dealerships (“Dubai's automotive spare parts trade worth AED 37 billion”, 2013).

And secondly, the disparity of cycle times for different manufacturing processes causes neglect of the Takt time (Linck 1999, p. 5) which must be adhered to in order to meet the demands rate. Also, the disparity in the EPEI (Feld 2001) of different processes is causing a waste of human capital as twenty percent of skilled workers have very little work to do, though they are paid standard salaries.