It was a little past 9:00 on a Monday morning when Jeff Baker walked into your office with a box of donuts. He offered you one as he sat down. This didn’t strike you as odd since members of the staff often brought donuts or kolaches to pass around the office. But, they didn’t usually sit down after offering you one.

Question

“I’ve been talking with Anne about a problem we have with short term capacity in our pad printing operation. You know, that’s where we print the logo on the Custom lines of yo yos. We have received more orders than usual for July (we are using July 2005 in this case) and I want to release the orders to pad printing in a way that will enable us to meet our due date commitments in the best way possible. Would you have time to look at the order list (attached) and see what kind of schedule we should follow in July to do that? By the way, you have established quite a reputation in your short stay here. You have a talent for really explaining why your recommendations are the best approach in a way that all of us ‘over-the-hill’ managers can understand. Please be sure to do that for me too. I want to understand why your recommendation is the best schedule and what the trade-offs are for other possible schedules--and none of that philosophical college mumbo-jumbo. Remember, I came up through the ranks. I don’t have one of those sheepskins on my wall,” he says with a laugh.

Since your schedule was back to normal after that MRP report you did for Anne, you agreed to look at the information. After that compliment, how could you say no? “Try to get back to me within a couple of days,” Jeff said as he left your office.

As you open your old operations management text you smear donut icing all over the cover. “Where’s a napkin when you need one,” you mutter as you wipe off the cover with an old inter-office memo. “That’s one book I don’t want to spoil given the number of times I have consulted it in just the past few weeks.”

After a few minutes with the text, you call the production control office to confirm the pad printing schedule. They confirm that pad printing runs one 8-hour shift per day. They tell you that due to a make-up day for the flooding in June, pad printing will be running 23 days in July (they will work 3-Saturdays on 9, 16 and 23 July, and take a one-day holiday for July 4th). You thank them for the information and then you begin to develop your plan.

Even though Jeff lacks a college degree, from what you have seen, he is very sharp. And obviously he knows good work when he sees it since he liked, and apparently understood your past work. You resolve to cover all the bases but in a way that is a clear as possible.

Appendix to Assignment 4

Pad Printing Order List

Job Number Date Order Set-Up Production Due Date
Received Time Time
01-7703A 6/4/05 2 hrs. 6 days 11 July
01-7745A 6/7/05 4 hrs. 2 days 8 July
01-7836A 6/12/05 2 hrs. 8 days 25 July
01-7921A 6/14/05 4 hrs. 3 days 19 July
01-7999A 6/15/05 4 hrs. 9 days 29 July

Note: Set-up time is to set up the pad printer at the start of the job. Set-up includes thoroughly cleaning the printing heads and ink reservoirs, installing the new pad(s) and ink supply, and carefully aligning the machine.

Set-up at the beginning of a new day with the same job is insignificant.