Dore Dore Case Study
Operations for Management
Group Assignment
Contents
Question 1 2
Question 2 3
Question 3 5
Question 4 7
Appendices 9
Appendix 1 9
Appendix 2 10
Appendix 3 11
Appendix 4 12
Appendix 5 13
Question 1
Evaluate the changes Dore-Dore has made in its children’s knitwear division. How does the performance of the traditional operation and the cellular manufacturing system differ? For example, how does work-in-process inventory change when cells are implemented?
Measured against Marquet’s objective of creating a ‘quick response’ strategy that would increase the Dore-Dore’s (DD) supply chain’s ‘speed and flexibility’, the implementation of a cellular manufacturing system in the sewing department proved very successful with a substantial improvement in performance.
Cellular manufacturing significantly reduced many types of waste present in the traditional sewing process and resulted in throughput time falling from 15 days to 1 day. Given a flow rate of 2,000 garments per day work-in-progress (WIP) fell from 30,000 to 2,000 units, improving annual WIP turns from 16X to 240X. The value of in WIP fell by an estimated 1.23FF million and holding costs by 275,000FF .
The grid layout by machine type of the traditional system took no account of garment dependent workflow variability and resulted in the unnecessary movement of inventory. Variability in activity times or operator performance produced bottlenecks and long waiting times. By contrast the garment specific cell design reduced product movement and cross trained operators who could switch tasks, helped balance work flows.
Traditionally up to 5 people were required to move batches between operators. If these people were busy, batches would have to wait. Supervisors were required to devise and fill out routing slips for every garment, the complexity of which increased the likelihood of errors. Under the cell system because operators moved the garments themselves, there were less errors and improved
Group Assignment
Contents
Question 1 2
Question 2 3
Question 3 5
Question 4 7
Appendices 9
Appendix 1 9
Appendix 2 10
Appendix 3 11
Appendix 4 12
Appendix 5 13
Question 1
Evaluate the changes Dore-Dore has made in its children’s knitwear division. How does the performance of the traditional operation and the cellular manufacturing system differ? For example, how does work-in-process inventory change when cells are implemented?
Measured against Marquet’s objective of creating a ‘quick response’ strategy that would increase the Dore-Dore’s (DD) supply chain’s ‘speed and flexibility’, the implementation of a cellular manufacturing system in the sewing department proved very successful with a substantial improvement in performance.
Cellular manufacturing significantly reduced many types of waste present in the traditional sewing process and resulted in throughput time falling from 15 days to 1 day. Given a flow rate of 2,000 garments per day work-in-progress (WIP) fell from 30,000 to 2,000 units, improving annual WIP turns from 16X to 240X. The value of in WIP fell by an estimated 1.23FF million and holding costs by 275,000FF .
The grid layout by machine type of the traditional system took no account of garment dependent workflow variability and resulted in the unnecessary movement of inventory. Variability in activity times or operator performance produced bottlenecks and long waiting times. By contrast the garment specific cell design reduced product movement and cross trained operators who could switch tasks, helped balance work flows.
Traditionally up to 5 people were required to move batches between operators. If these people were busy, batches would have to wait. Supervisors were required to devise and fill out routing slips for every garment, the complexity of which increased the likelihood of errors. Under the cell system because operators moved the garments themselves, there were less errors and improved