OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Operations Management: Reflective Report



Operations Management: Reflective Report

Introduction

This paper considers the lessons to be learned by management in its role as a ship-owner from the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, and details the findings against management by the Court of Inquiry and its recommendations as to what qualities management should have had.

Case 1: Kristen's Cookie Company A1

The all steps - washing and mixing ingredients (6min), spooning the cookies (2min), putting the cookies in the oven and setting the oven (1min), cooling down the cookies (5min), packing them (2min), and finally accept the payment (1min) - will take 6+2+1+9+5+2+1=26 minutes. Secondly, we consider the situation of a 2dozens order (seen in the Gantt chart followed). When I finished spooning the first dozen of cookies, at the end of min6, my roommate can start his work. (Roger, 1986, 13-15) And when baking the second dozen, he can start cooling the first dozen and pack them. Assume we accept the payment after the cookies can be delivered, the total time of fill the order will be 36 min. Finally we accept the model and consider the situation of an x dozen(s) order, we can easily conclude that the total time is 16+10x minutes. (Roger, 1986, 13-15) Gantt chart of filling a order of 2 dozens of cookies(1min for 1 cell)Q2: How many orders can you fill in a night, assuming you are open four hours each night?When baking the cookies, my roommate will still be free for 2 min during which he can accept more orders. To maximize orders to fill in 4 hours, we assume that there are enough orders and all of the orders require 1 dozen cookies of a same flavor. (Roger, 1986, 13-15) Set the number of orders we can fill to be N. According to the result gained in Question 1, we can say 16+10N<=4×60, so we can get N (max)=22. For me, the steps of washing, mixing and spooning are done by myself. So my valuable time for 1 order is 6+2=8(min)For my roommate, the steps of setting the oven, removing cookies from the oven, packing them and accepting the payment are done by him. So his valuable time for 1 order is 1+0+2+1=4(min)

If we rent another oven for one dozen orders: Time of one oven: 16+10×nTime of two ovens: 16+7×nSo for each order, it saves three minutes than previous. If it's a two or three dozen order, it will save more than that. Assume our profit per dozen is P and considering the one dozen orders. So the original profit per hour is60/10×P = 6.00PThe two ovens' cost per dozen is: 60/7 × P = 8.57PSo the highest price of renting an oven we can accept is 2.57P per hour, that is, when P is set to $10, $25.7/h. And the order-taking process also needs to change. The consumers don't need to telephone in their orders and wait for pickup. They can come to my apartment directly to buy ...