OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Operations Management



Operation Management

Introduction

In 1900, George and Leopold Stickley founded a company by the name of L. & J.G. Stickley near Syracuse New York. This company made furniture from mahogany, oak, white and fine cherry. The owners re-launched their original line of oak furniture, which accounted for almost 50% of the sales of the company in 1980s. The company has experienced bad and opportune times, and it also was on the brick of bankruptcy during the 1970s. In the 1974, the current owners brought the falling company under their leadership, and after that, the company has grown and prospered. Now, Stickley has five retail showrooms in New York, two in Connecticut, one in North Carolina, and its furniture is sold nationally by some 120 dealers.

In this paper, the some questions regarding the Stickley company has been discussed. The production processing, benefits of their policy and suggestions have been discussed in this paper.

Which types of production processing—job shop, batch, repetitive, or continuous—is the primary mode of operation at Stick- fey Furniture? Why? What other types of processing are used to a lesser extent? Explain.

There are four types of production processing, which are as follows:

Job Shop Method: A single worker or group of workers handles the entire task.

Batch Method: This divides work into pieces or operations. Often, we see that batches produce several "works in progress" inventories where parts are waiting to move onto the next step in the process

Repetitive: This involves pre-planned scheduling of tasks that repeat themselves a lot. A good example of this is what happens with fast food. Often, this food industry uses repetitive processing.

Continuous: A process that continually obtains raw materials and processes them through to completion. A good example would be oil drilling and processing, which operates 24/7.

Let's eliminate the most obvious methods first. The company does not have 24/7 operations, and it stocks goods in "white inventory" along the way, so Continuous does not apply here. Also, while it is tempting to choose "Job Shop Method", this implies the entire process is handled by the same group of people from the time the wood arrives until it leaves the plant and goes to the store (Pilkington & Meredith, 2009). This does not happen here, although small groups do work on "jobs" as the case refers to them. The Batch Method is the strongest candidate here. In the production process, we saw that goods are produced in several different "batches" along the way, from cutting, to some pre-planned parts and pieces. Also, to a lesser extent, we see that there is some Repetitive type work done as well to stock the "white inventory" also to make sure that there is a level supply of furniture over time to meet seasonal demand. Repetitive processing does require planning, and as we can see from the case, the scheduling managers schedule for 8-10 weeks in advance.

How does management keep track of job status and location during production?

The answer is fairly ...