Indian Institute of Management Ranchi

Course on Operations Management I

Questions for Case Analysis

Donner Company

Synopsis

The Donner Company is a small but rapidly growing firm that produces circuit boards to the specifications of electronic manufacturing companies. At the time of the case, the company is only in its third year of operations, and is experiencing a rapid surge in business. The case provides a detailed, step-by-step description of the manufacturing process – which involves only 22 production employees – defines the order processing and control procedures, and identifies operating problems concerning production bottlenecks, worker performance and methods, and quality and delivery problems.

Questions for Case Analysis

1. What is the normal process flow of the production system at Donner? Draw a process flow diagram.

2. What orders would you schedule on the CNC drill? On the CNC router?

3. What is the capacity of the Dry Film Photoresist area? (assume that the order size is eight). How does capacity change with order size?

4. What is the standard labor time for an order of one board? 8 boards? 200 boards?

5. How is Donner doing? What problems do you see?

6. Why do these problems exist?

7. What are the information flows within the Donner factory? Trace an order as it moves from the originating customer to completion.

8. What specific actions do you recommend Plummer take to address these problems?

Assembling Smartphones: Takt Time =/ Cycle TimeSynopsis

This case offers an opportunity to discuss the context of a manufacturing process choice, and then examine actual production numbers that resulted from a series of choices. It is also meant to review the Hayes-Wheelwright Product-Process matrix, and the impact of variability on line performance. The choice of process type generally involves making tradeoffs. The choice of manufacturing process design for smartphones is interesting because the company experimented progressively with four different designs. The heart of the case discussion would be around the pros and cons of each choice, and what did they learn from making each one.

Questions for Case Analysis

1. The company has experienced industrial engineers who have put hundreds of products into production. Why do they still experiment with new products that came into the factory; should not the choice be straightforward?

2. Are there aspects of the site’s operating system that enable rapid change and adaptation?

3. What happened with the conveyor-paced line?

4. What do you think happened on the smartphone line in the case?

Applichem (A) Synopsis

This case can be used to introduce the problems and opportunities entailed in managing a multi-plant manufacturing network. It raises the opportunities for coordinating among plants as well as for rationalizing capacity. The case allows participants to use detailed data on costs, material and labor resources, capacity output rates, and international exchange and inflation rates to compare the performance of 6 plants which manufactured Release-ease (a chemical additive to molding compounds) in 6 different countries in 1982. A major issue is how and whether to use any of the cross-plant data in the case for evaluating the plants and their managers. This issue involves the judgment of how the cost differences have arisen and what managers can do to affect their costs. The comparisons relate to Joe Spadaro’s decision about the best configuration of plants to serve his industrial customers world-wide.

Questions for Case Analysis

1. Compare the performance of Applichem’s 6 Release-ease plants.

2. Why were some plants “better” performers than others?

3. How would you advise Joe Spadaro to configure his worldwide manufacturing system?