Operations Management - Research Paper Example

Batch production processing; “Involves the manufacture of medium size lots of the same product. The lots may be produced only once or they may be produced at regular intervals. Lot sizes and the frequency of production of a single item is tied up with the inventory control policies” (National Institute of Technology Calicut, n.d. pg. 3) which is very evident with Stickley Furniture’s leveled manufacturing process. Job-shop as a manufacturing system is also present in the company evident with the seven master cabinet makers that handle customized orders.

The use of batch in the operation of production processing of Stickley Furniture is also evident with its manufacturing practice. It was cited in the problem that its production process “begin[s] with sawing operations where large boards received from luber mills are cut into smaller operation”. Then there are subsequent “Subsequent operations [that] provide additional cuts for specific jobs” (pg. 688). This subsequent operations involve “gluing some of the pieces together; they will end up as tops of tables, desks, dressers, or similar item.

Large presses hold 20 to 30 glued sections at a time. Other piece that will become table or chair legs, chair backs or other items go through various shaping operations. Next comes a series of sanding operations .. some pieces may require drilling or mortising some items require carving, which involves highly skilled workers”. This clearly indicates that workers are divided into deparments to do certain jobs which is a characteristic of a batch production processing with sub assemblies of job-shop or customized functions.

In this production set-up “each worker is responsible for cheking his her quality, as well as the quality of materials received from preceding operations, and to report any deficiencies” (pg. 688). 2. How does management keep track of job status and location during production? Furniture parts which are still works in progress are being monitored through bar codes. After workers assemble the various components, either into subassemblies or sometimes directly to other components to obtain completed pieces, each item is stamped with the date of production,type of job and their location.

Careful records are kept so that if a piece is ever returned for repairs, complete instructions are available to enable repair people to closely match the the original piece. When a particular operation is finished (such as sawing or sanding), the operator removes a bar code sticker and delivers it to the scheduling office where it is scanned into the computer, thereby enabling production control to keep track of progress on a job, and to know its location on the shop. 3. Suppose the company has just received an order for 40 mission oak dining room sets.

Briefly list the the kinds of information the company will need to plan, schedule and process this job. First, per company’s level production policy, the inventory has first to be checked if there are any mission oak dining room set remaining. If there are, their numbers should be should be deducted from the intended number of production. The materials are then made availabe and prepared which in this case are mission oak lumbers. The mission oak boards are inspected and marked for knots locations and other possible defect that may be found on the board before feeding it into the saw.

The saw has a computer-controlled “