Earthbuddy Case Study

Story 1. Anton Rabie and Ronnen Harary created a product that allowed customers to express their own creativity through styling grass hair that sprouted from a small humanlike head. They called this product Earth Buddy and the popularity soon spread like wildfire. Product sales started through Toronto-area flower shops and gift stores but as demand increased they were able to start distributing Earth Buddy at K-Mart, Toys R Us, Wal-Mart and stores alike. However, the production of Earth Buddies were time consuming and very dependent on the weather. The production process had a total of seven steps. The first step was filling which included six machines that filled the basic round heads with nylon stocking, sawdust and grass seed. The next step operators shaped the product’s eye-glasses. The rest of the process included moulding the face, placing the glasses on the nose, and gluing the buddies eyes in. Next the buddies were sent to the painter who finished off the buddy with a fabric paint mouth. The last step was to place the product on shelving to dry. In the right conditions, this step took about five hours, however, if humidity levels were higher, drying time increased to seven hours.
Task
2. With Due to hot and humid summer days that were forecasted to come, Earth Buddy production director Ben Varadi had to confront the challenge of drying time taking an excess time of 2 hours. Due to this challenge work in process may be impacted negatively which causes an increase in production time and overall efficiency standards will decrease.
Situation
3.

Capacity

4. Stage 1 (flling): 60 min/1.5 min = 40 units per hour 6 operators x 40 units per hour= 240 units per hour

Stage 2 (moulding): 60 min/ .8 min = 75 units per hour 3 operators x 75 units per hour = 225 units per hour

Stage 3 (eyes): 60 min/ .4 min = 150 units per hour 2 operators x 150 units per hour = 300 units per hour