Donner Case Essay

Words: 1100
Pages: 5

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

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

Operation Setup Time (min) Run Time/board
Manual Drill 15 0.08*500 = 40
CNC Drill 240 0.004*500 = 2
Punch Press 50 1
CNC Router 150 0.5

a) CNC Drill vs Manual Drill
Let x be order size than –
15 + 40x = 240 + 2x; x = 5.92;
From this equation we get x approximately equal to 6. So Donner Company should use the CNC Drill for orders of more than or equal to 6 boards. The Manual Drill process should be used for all orders of less than 6 boards. This is because production time for CNC is less than manual for order size of
…show more content…
Reasons for quality problem faced by the company could be –

• Interruptions to the operators because of some rush order-taking priority over the present job at hand. This would require new set-up, which in turn would make it easy for mistakes to occur.
• Flow of information is not smooth. Flaherty is the keeper of the factory orders and the blueprints for each job. Every time a worker needs access to this information the operation is disrupted until the blue prints are retrieved from Flaherty.
• No time set aside for reworking parts that failed inspection.
• Fluctuation in time spent setting up, and correcting inefficiencies would cause an inventory build up in steps preceding it. This inventory build up would cause shifting of the workers form one job to another in order to use up that inventory and delay another operation.

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

Recommendations

• They should focus on improving the time it takes to get the materials for the orders. They can accomplish this by establishing a materials inventory system, so that they are aware of what is on hand and what materials need to be ordered ahead of time. This would reduce the time that the factory supervisor spends waiting for materials, deciding how to schedule the jobs and shifting workers from one job to another.
• They