Description

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ministry of Education
Saudi Electronic University

College of Administrative and Financial Sciences

Assignment 2
Introduction to Operations Management (MGT 311)
Due Date: 02/11/2024 @ 23:59
Course Name: Introduction to Operations
Management
Course Code: MGT 311

Student’s Name:

Semester: First

CRN: 12052

Student’s ID Number:

Academic Year:2024-25-1st

For Instructor’s Use only
Instructor’s Name: Dr Zahra Ghali
Students’ Grade:
/10

Level of Marks: High/Middle/Low

General Instructions – PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY
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The Assignment must be submitted on Blackboard (WORD format only) via
the allocated folder.
Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted.
Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented, marks may be reduced
for poor presentation. This includes filling in your information on the cover page.
Students must mention the question number clearly in their answers.
Late submissions will NOT be accepted.
Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other
resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
All answers must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font. No
pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).
Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted.

Learning Outcomes:
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To design profitable services that provide a high level of quality to satisfy business
needs.
To ensure that the services delivered are reasonable and relevant to the customers.
To gain an understanding of the business rules and ensure that the results are in
alignment with the organizational goals.

Go through the given case scenario
‘There must be a better way of running this place!’ said Dean Hammond, recently recruited
General Manager of Boys and Boden, as he finished a somewhat stressful conversation
with a complaining customer, a large and loyal local building contractor.
‘We had six weeks to make their special staircase, and we are still late! I’ll have to persuade
one of the joiners to work overtime this weekend to get everything ready for Monday. We
never seem to get complaints about quality, as our men always do an excellent job … but
there is usually a big backlog of work, and something always gets finished late, so how
should we set priorities? We could do the most profitable work first, or the work for our
biggest customers, or the jobs which are most behind on. In practice, we try to satisfy
everyone as best we can, but inevitably someone’s order will be late. In theory, each job
should be quite profitable, since we build into the price a big allowance for waste, and for
timber defects. And we know the work content of almost any task we would have to do;
this is the basis of our estimating system. But, overall, the department is disappointingly
unprofitable, and most problems seem to end up with a higher-than-anticipated cost, and
with late deliveries!’
Boys and Boden was a small, successful, privately-owned timber and building materials
merchant based in a small town. Over the years it had established a large Joinery
Department, which made doors, windows, staircases and other timber products, all to the
exact special requirements of the customers, mostly comprising numerous local and
regional builders. In addition, the joiners would cut and prepare special orders of timber,
such as non-standard sections and special profiles, including old designs of skirting board,
sometimes at very short notice, and often even while the customers waited. Typically, for
larger joinery items, the customer provided simple dimensioned sketches of the required
products. These were then passed to the central Estimating and Quotations Department
which, in conjunction with the Joinery Manager, calculated costs and prepared a written
quotation, which was faxed or posted to the customer. This first stage was normally
completed within two or three days, but on occasions could take a week or more. On receipt
of an order, the original sketches and estimating details were passed back to the Joinery
Manager, who roughly scheduled them into his manufacturing plan, allocating them to
individual craftsmen as each became available. Most of the joiners were capable of making
any product, and enjoyed the wide variety of challenging work.

The Joinery Department appeared congested and somewhat untidy, but everyone believed
that this was acceptable and normal for job shops, since there was no single flow route for
materials. Whatever the design of the item being made, it was normal for the joiner to select
the required bulk timber from the storage building across the yard. This roughly-sawn
timber was then prepared using a planer-thicknesser machine which gave it smooth,
parallel surfaces. After that, the joiners would use a variety of processes, depending on
product. The timber could be machined into different cross-sectional shapes, cut into
component lengths using a radial arm saw, joints were formed by hand tools, or using a
morticing machine, and so on. Finally, the products would be glued and assembled with
screws and nails, sanded smooth by hand or by machine, and treated with preservatives,
stains or varnishes if required. All the large and more expensive floor-standing machines
were grouped together by type (for example, saws) or were single pieces of equipment
shared by all 10 joiners. Every joiner also owned a complete set of hand tools which they
guarded and cared for with pride. Dean described what one might observe on a random
visit to the Joinery Department:
‘One or two long staircases partly assembled, and crossing several work areas; large door
frames on trestles being assembled; stacks of window components for a large contract
being prepared and jointed, and so on. Offcuts and wood shavings are scattered around the
work area, but are periodically cleared when they get in the way or form a hazard. The
joiners try to fit in with each other over the use of machinery, so are often working on
several, part-finished items at once. Varnishing or staining has to be done when it’s quiet,
for example towards the end of the working day or at weekends, or even outside, to avoid
sawdust contamination. Long offcuts are stacked around the workshop, to be used up on
any future occasion when these lengths or sections are required. However, it is often easier
to take a new length of timber for each job, so the offcuts do tend to build up over time.
Unfortunately, everything I have described is getting worse as we get busier … our sales
are increasing so the system is getting more congested. The joiners are almost climbing
over each other to complete their work. Unfortunately, despite having more orders, the
department has remained stubbornly unprofitable!
’Whilst analysing in detail the lack of profit, we were horrified to find that, for the majority
of orders, the actual times booked by the joiners exceeded the estimated times by up to 50
per cent. Sometimes this was clearly attributable to the inexperience of newly employed
joiners. Although fully trained and qualified, they might lack the experience needed to
complete a complex job in the time an Estimator would expect; but there had been no
feedback of this to the individual. We then put one of these men on doors only; having
overcome his initial reluctance, he has become an enthusiastic “door expert” and gets
closely involved in quotations too, so now he always does his work within the time
estimates! However, the main time losses were found to be the result of general delays
caused by congestion, interference, double-handling, and rework to rectify in-process
damage. Moreover, we found that a joiner walked an average of nearly 5 km a day, usually
carrying around heavy bits of wood.

‘When I did my operations management course on my MBA, the professor described the
application of cellular manufacturing and JIT. From what I can remember, the idea seems
to be to get better flow, reducing the times and distances in the process, and thus achieving
quicker throughput times. That is just what we needed, but these concepts were explained
in the context of high-volume, repetitive production of bicycles, whereas all the products
we make are one-offs. However, although we do make a lot of different staircases, they all
use roughly the same process steps:
1 Cutting timber to width and length
2 Sanding
3 Machining
4 Tenoning
5 Manual assembly (glue and wedges)
‘We have a lot of unused factory floor space, so it would be relatively easy to set up a selfcontained staircase cell. There is a huge demand for specially made stairs in this region,
but also a lot of competing small joinery businesses with low overheads, which can beat us
on price and lead time. So we go to a lot of trouble quoting for stairs, but only win about
20 percent of the business. If we could get the cell idea to work, we should be more
competitive on price and delivery, hence winning more orders. At least that is the theory.
I know we will need a lot more volume to justify establishing the cell, so it’s really a case
of whether to construct a cell in anticipation of higher demand or to try to win more
business first. To do the latter, we would have to reduce our selling prices and lead-times,
and then allocate more joiners to complete the higher volumes of orders until we had
enough work to set up the cell. I favor setting up the cell first so that we can have a “capacity
leads demand” strategy.’
Questions
1. To what extent could (or should) Dean expect to apply the philosophies and techniques
of JIT to the running of the staircase cell?
(2.5 MM)
2. What are likely to be the main categories of costs and benefits in establishing the cell?
Are there any non-financial benefits which should be taken into account?
(2.5 MM)
3.How different would the cell work (job design) be to that in the main Joinery
Department?
(2.5 MM)
4. What risks are associated with Dean’s proposal? (2.5 MM)
Note:
• You must include at least 5 references.
• Format your references using APA style.
• Each answer must not be less than 300 words

Answers
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