OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT-1 EXECUTIVE SHIRT COMPANY Group Members: Introduction The executive shirt company is a well known brand in apparel industry having varieties of high quality standard size readymade shirts which were competitively priced also . Foreseeing the tremendous opportunity in custom shirt market, the general manager Mr. Dwight Collier decides to venture in to this new product segment. As the existing custom sized dress shirt market commanded a substantial high price of 75% more w. r. t similar off-the-shelf shirt and also the delivery time was more than 6 weeks. So Mr.
Dwight collier decided to start production of a line of custom made dress shirt which will be moderately priced and at the same time will be delivered within 10 working days after customer places the order. So Mr. Dwight ordered a new “low-ply” laser cutting machine for the purpose and also planned to hire a new worker to operate the same. Before starting production Mr. Dwight wanted to study several options for designing the manufacturing process for custom shirt line. So he endowed the task to two of his managers Mike and Ike to envisage him a plan for incorporating production of custom shirts into the existing manufacturing process.
Taking into consideration the following conditions: * Manufacturing lead time for the custom shirts <= 5 working days. * 2000 no. of custom sized shirts to be produced per month. * The factory will continue producing 16000 standard size readymade shirts per month, which it is producing at present. * Refrain from any large capital expenditure. The existing ECS Production facility ECS’s current process is designed to make large volume of shirts with limited product variety and more or less constant volume. Following are the features of the present production unit which is located at Pauquet, Mississippi: * Make to stock process Job Shop manufacturing process * Product layout arrangement of shop floor. * Total production capacity: 16000 shirts * No of workers: 64 * Working hrs: 8 hrs shift X 20 Days per month. * Regular Wages : 6$ per hour per employee * Overtime wages: 9$ per hour per employee. Process Description The production shop floor was divided into work areas where the following operations were performed: 1. Shirts pattern are cut on a computer controlled cutting machine, which cuts 8 different pattern of shirt each having 60 layers of cloth, i. e. total (60X*) 480 shirts at each time.
The set-up time for laying each layer of fabric is 1. 5 minutes. And the average operating time to cut all the 8 patterns is 30 minutes (This is regardless of the no. of layers of cloth cut). Thus for cutting 480 shirts it takes on average (1. 5X60)+30= 120 minutes. 2. After cutting, the shirts were sent for sewing in batches of 60 shirts in a single batch. 3. Here 12 operations are performed, some of the operations are carried out in parallel and some are doe in series process (as shown in the process flow diagram). 4. Then the finished shirts are inspected for any fault or defect of manufacturing. 5.
Then the shirts are ironed and packed for final disposal to inventories. Pie Chart Representing Distribution of workers Bar Graph Showing effective time to produce one shirt (Task Wise) Proposed Alternative Plans Mike’s Plan * Minimum order quantity should be 5 custom shirts for a given size. * Both the cutting machines will be installed side by side and work in parallel. * Regular shirts would be cut in the old machine and new shirts will be cut in the new laser cutting machine. * The custom shirts as well as the regular shirts will be manufactured in a single assembly line except the cutting process. Reduce batch size from 60 to 5 shirts. Ike’s Plan * Custom shirt production line should be kept separate from the standard size assembly line. * 1 worker from every section will be relocated to the new assembly line. * 12 sewing machine and 1 iron machine would be moved to the custom shirt line. * The batch size should be 3 shirts for each of the 15 workers. * Overtime if necessary can be allowed. Detailed Plan Analysis Existing Line & Mike’s Proposed Plan Time Analysis for Regular Production Strategy Time Analysis for Mike’s Production Strategy Ike’s Proposed Plan Time Analysis for Ike’s Production Strategy
Solution and Recommendation Calculations (Question 1) Recommendations Mike’s plan is a better solution to the custom shirt production problem as per the inferences drawn from the data analysis. Mike’s Plan * Current resources are enough to run the entire production. * Manufacturing lead time does not exceed limits. * Capacity utilization is better. * Direct labour cost is less. Ike’s Plan * Separate assembly line can be handled easily due to simplified information flow. * Overtime required for some of the tasks. * Labour cost increased. * Significant difference in the idle times of workers from one department to another.
