MGMT 651 ASSIGNMENT

MGMT 651

Conduct a literature review for the following items using the textbook, the Internet, a journal article, or other sources. Write a brief description of each and record the source of the information in the current APA format.

• Shop floor control
• Issues and considerations with scheduling personnel
• Benefits and challenges of using simulations
• Constraint management

In the discussion part of this activity, address the following:

• It is suggested that you post your initial response by mid-week of the module week. Copy and paste the brief descriptions of each of the required items in this activity in your posting. Include the location of the information (website, book, article, etc).
• Review other postings and reply to at least two posts by the end of the module week.

CLASSMATES POSTS:

Richard, 

1. Shop floor control
Shop floor control comprises the methods and systems used to prioritize, track, and report against production orders and schedules. It includes the procedures used to evaluate current resource status, labor, machine usage, and other information required to support the overall planning, scheduling, and costing systems related to shop floor operation. Shop floor control typically calculates work in process based on a percentage of completion for each order and operation that is useful in inventory valuations and materials planning.
Shop floor control is responsible for the detailed management of activities and the flow of materials inside the plant, including employees, materials, machines, and production time. Shop floor control activity typically begins after planning (e.g., with MRP, ERP); once planned, orders and purchase requisitions are created. Shop floor control attends to the following functions (sequentially):
• Planned orders
• Conversion of planned orders to process/production
• Production and process order scheduling
• Capacity requirements planning
• Material availability assessment
• Release of production/process orders
• Material withdrawals
• Order confirmations
• Goods receipt documentation
• Order settlement
Shop floor control may also include identifying and assessing vulnerabilities and risks due to the shop floor environment, employees, process, and the technologies employed at the shop-floor level. Based on the assessment of these factors, shop floor control initiates measures to keep risk at an acceptable minimum level.
Best practices for shop floor control include:
• Efficiently execute, prioritize, and release work orders to the shop floor with real-time status of progress and completion.
• Deliver accurate and up-to-date information on materials consumption and availability, which is essential for reliable inventory planning and costing.
• Effectively execute change management processes to ensure that the proper revision of products, bills of materials, and processes are always in place for production.
• Automate shop floor equipment control and data collection to reduce human errors and increase productivity.
• Provide the correct manufacturing SOPs, technical drawings, and diagnostics to shop floor operators to reinforce training and ensure proper processing.
• Download setup programs directly to equipment based on product and process specifications.
In summary, shop floor control within a manufacturing execution system (MES) can improve the productivity of any shop, regardless of its manufacturing style or capacity.
http://camstar.industrysoftware.automation.siemens.com/en/resources/glossary/shop-floor- control/

2. Issues and considerations with scheduling personnel
1. Policies and practices affect total labor cost.
Little “tactical” scheduling analysis done
2. Overstaffing increases labor costs while understaffing may impact quality of care or service
3. Presents difficult combinatorial problems.
4. Consumes costly managerial time and effort; ad-hoc methods are the rule.
5. Bias often to favor employee over institutional needs.
6. Large impact on employee dissatisfaction and turnover
7. not only in healthcare - police, fast food, call centers, airlines
Computerized systems under-utilized and often require inputs which themselves are the solution to a difficult scheduling analysis problem.

3. Benefits and challenges of using simulations
Forecasting can be classified into four basic types: qualitative, time series analysis, causal relationships, and simulation.
Simulation forecasting kind predict performance solely on the basis of the sales series’ own past yet provide no understanding of the economic drivers of the business. Consequently, they cannot be used for simulating the impact of economic change or planned marketing strategies.
Advantages and disadvantages of simulation
ADVANTAGES
• It can avoid danger and loss of life.
• Conditions can be varied and outcomes investigated.
• Critical situations can be investigated without risk.
• It is cost effective.
• Simulations can be slowed down to study behavior more closely.
• Disadvantages
• It can be expensive to measure how one thing affects another, to take the initial measurements, to create the model itself (such as aerodynamic wind tunnels).
• To simulate something a thorough understanding is needed and an awareness of all the factors involved, without this a simulation cannot be created.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/ict/modelling/1computersimulationrev3.shtml (Links to an external site.)

4. Constraint management
Constraint management is a tool used by supervisors and other management personnel to help employees maintain task focus. According to Goal Systems International, a Washington-based business consulting firm, constraint management seeks to help employees and supervisors remain locked in on the most important element of business success: system constraints. These constraints, or necessary conditions for reaching a goal, vary by business and can include meeting manufacturing output quotas, completing products in a timely manner or obtaining specific customer satisfaction scores on product surveys. Constraint management believes that losing focus on these key elements can spell disaster for a workforce and the business as a whole.
3 Rules of Constraint Management
IDENTIFY SYSTEM CONSTRAINTS
A business owner or supervisor using the constraint model of management can't focus employees on system constraints without first identifying those constraints. Naming the constraints that are integral to a company's success, including company work policies and manufacturing standards, sets up clear expectations for employees regarding performance and productivity. Stating these constraints clearly to employees in simple language ensures that workers understand expectations and how to operate within those parameters. Disciplining employees who do not meet these expectations is necessary to preserve the integrity of system constraints.
EXPLOITING THE CONSTRAINT
Maximizing production through a particular system constraint is integral for a company to receive the highest profit from an existing capacity limit. According to Rockford Consulting Group, an Illinois-based management consulting firm, exploiting the constraint is the process by which a company maximizes profit through use of a given system constraint. For example, streamlining a manufacturing process by eliminating an unnecessary production step helps maximize profit and doesn't change the company's existing capacity limitation. A capacity limitation can be money, raw materials or number of workers needed to create a product.
IMPROVE CONSTRAINT GAPS
The constraint management model seeks to improve gaps between constrained resources and no constrained resources. Tying the completion of project steps by no constrained resources to completion by constrained resources improves operational efficiency and closes gaps in schedules. For example, slowing down the production schedules of raw material deliveries and product shipping allows constrained product manufacturing to finish items without accumulating a huge backlog of building materials and shipping demands. This keeps the three departments working as one unit without any one department waiting around for the others to catch up in the production cycle.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/3-rules-constraint-management-36467.html
Jacobs, F. R., & Chase, R. B. (2014). Operations and supply chain management (14th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Jacob,

Shop Floor Control

According to the text book Operations and Supply Chain Management by F. Robert Jacobs and Richard B. Chase (2014), shop-floor control is defined in the APICS Dictionary as “A system for utilizing data from the shop floor as well as data processing files to maintain and communicate status information on shop orders and workcenters.”

The major functions of shop floor control, also known as production activity control, are assigning priority of each shop order, maintaining work-in-process quantity information, conveying shop-order status, providing output data for capacity and control purposes, providing quantity by location, and various other measurements.

Smaller job shops and individual departments can usually use Gantt charts to plan and track jobs. This is a bar chart that shows sequential operations with current progress to see if a job is on schedule. Some other basic tools of shop-floor control are the daily dispatch list, various status reports (including anticipated delay, scrap, rework), and an input/output report. The input/output report is significant since it shows what capacity is available to the center. Hours in should never exceed hours out because that increases backlogs and therefore lead times.

Lastly, there are 10 main principles of workcenter scheduling listed on page 600 and 601 of the text. These include linking job flow to cash flow and how day-to-day operations should be ran.

Issues and Considerations with Scheduling Personnel

Scheduling in most organizations revolves around setting weekly, daily, and hourly personnel schedules. The goal for most firms is to schedule the least amount of people to accomplish the daily work load while minimizing the variance between actual and planned output. First, a daily or actual demand forecast is created for each shop or function. This is then converted to work hours per function and turned into workers required per function. These figures can be summed and then adjusted by absences and vacations to give the planned hours. Those are then divided by the number of hours in the work day to yield the required number of personnel.

Some services such as restaurants face changing requirements from hour to hour. Scheduling in this scenario is best approached using the “first hour” principle. This is basically progressively scheduling people to start work each hour so that there is enough support during peak hours. The first to arrive are then the first to be “cut” until the level of workers tapers off. Another option is to split shifts. This is where an employee works sometime in the morning and maybe part of the afternoon, takes a small break when there is down time, and then comes back to work his remaining four hours.

Benefits and Challenges of Using Simulations

Computer simulation’s main benefit is its ability to take complex situations and model them to make better decisions. There are even customiable programs like SimFactory (for manufacturing) and MedModel (for hospitals). However, it also requires knowledgable and trained staff to use them correctly. Model software isn’t always justified, and many problems are often solved through simple programs like Excel.

Constraint Management

Eli Goldratt’s theory of constraints dictates that the goal of the firm is to make money. There are several measurements of this in finance such as net profit, return on investment, and cash flow at a high level. There are also operational measures, like throughput, inventory, and operating expenses to show how a firm can make money efficiently. Dollars can be tied up through the company’s mismanaging of capacity. While most companies try to balance capacity, it is more important to capitalize on unbalanced capacity. That is, some parts and processes take longer to make than others, and these bottlenecks should be planned for accordingly. This synchronous control is done through feeding the bottleneck with the correct resources at the correct time so that WIP inventory and overall costs are minimized. Saving time at the bottleneck, not within the other processes, is an important concept of this technique since reducing non-bottlenecks just increases backlogs. Recognizing the correct drum, buffer and rope through the system keeps everything flowing smoothly so that the backlogs are minimized is critical to the flow’s success. And of course, high quality is key since scrapped parts after a bottleneck is essentially lost capacity (Jacobs & Chase, 2014).

Reference

Jacobs, F., & Chase, R. (2014). Operations and supply chain management (Fourteenth ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

PS: YOUR RESPONSE TO MY CLASSMATES POSTS CAN BE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE...PLEASE RESPOND RESPOND AS YOU TALKING TO THEM DIRECTLY.

II)  PLEASE SOLVE MY PROBLEM SET 7: FIRST ATTACHMENT