Bracket International Case Study
Angie Crippen
Davenport University
Case Review
The company Bracket International has grown 78 million last year with a cost of goods sold of 61 million. Currently there are three locations in Ohio, Kentucky, and South Carolina. At the Ohio and Kentucky factories are automated flow shops and South Carolina factory focuses on small custom orders and is more of a batched process. However all three locations use a bar coding labels and scanning equipment to monitor and control the flow of material. Currently there are 8,850 items scanned per day at all three factories. The Bracket International employees work 2000 hours each year with a average salary of $5,000.
A company is trying to explain why switching to a radio frequency identification device (RFID) system can save money. It will help the company to be on demand operational planning and control. The system could help speed of the process of workflow. Right now the average scan time per items is ten seconds. The ten seconds does not include the employee walking to each location to scan the bar code or replace any demanaged bar code tags. An average replacement of a tag can take as much as five minutes.
To purchase a radio frequency identification device for all three locations will cost around $620,000 plus for the software programming and debugging another $480,000. There could be an error with the computer unable to read the scan and the company believes the items is lost or not recorded in the Bracket International system. This could be cost error on the equipment. This system could cut down on audits because it is a readily location inventory.
Bracket International has lost a job averaging around two million per year from Wolf Furniture because they were not able to react quickly enough to change in job specification and order size. The Home Depot is expressing Bracket International needs to be