Executive Shirts Company Case Study
Essay by Atul Mishra • July 3, 2019 • Case Study • 4,844 Words (20 Pages) • 1,192 Views
OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
CASE 1: EXECUTIVE SHIRT COMPANY, INC.
GROUP 11
Savitra Bhagwat | 1914010
Naman Jhamaria | 1914029
Debapriya Majumdar | 1914041
Atul Mishra | 1914047
Anshuman Tiwari | 1914069
Executive Shirt Company, Inc. is known for high quality and competitively priced men’s shirts. A recent dip in sales has led general manager Dwight Collier to explore the alternatives. According to him, the market provides tremendous opportunity for Custom-sized dress shirt. He plans to introduce customized shirts in his current production facility as these shirts can fetch almost 75% more than regular standard shirts. For that, Mr. Collier introduced a change in manufacturing process by integrating a ‘low ply’ Laser Cutting Machine for customized shirts.
Characteristics of the new machine
- Small: can cut only 1 shirt pattern at a time out of up to 5 layers of cloth
- Extremely fast: Laying out pattern and cutting took only 2.5 minutes
- Higher Scrap rate: material costs 10% higher than for standard sized shirts
- New workers needed to operate the new machine
Planning the Custom Shirt Line: Constraints by Mr. Collier
- Manufacturing lead time for the custom shirts to be less than 5 working days
- The production volume to be same for standard-sized shirts at 16000 per month
- Allow for production of 2000 custom shirts per month
- Large capital expenditures not to be made
Company’s Current batch processing mechanism
The firm is manufacturing the standard-sized shirts using a batch process. Since few basic styles and colors contribute to a major portion of the sales, the firm has limited variety to produce. Hence, it has large batches of each kind of shirt (size and color).
The firm has five departments, as follows: (Table 1)
Type of Operation | Number of Workers | Number of Machines | Average WIP (number of 60 shirt-batches) |
Cutting | 4 | 1 | 16 |
Sewing | 48 | 48 | 144 |
Inspection | 4 | 12 | |
Ironing | 4 | 4 | 12 |
Packaging | 4 | 12 | |
Total | 64 | 53 | 196 |
It has one computer controlled cutting machine that can cut up to 60 layers of cloth (up to 8 patterns) at the same time. This process takes 30 minutes irrespective of the number of layers and pattern. Setup time is 1.5 minutes for each layer and 60 layers take total 90 minutes. The machine is operated by 4 workers, and is fully utilized.
- Number of shirts cut at a time = 60x8 = 480 Shirts
- Total time = setup time + runtime = 90 + 30 = 120 minutes
- Standard shirt cutting time = 120/480 = 0.25 minutes/shirt
- Number of workers = 4
(Table 2)
S.No. | Operation | Regular Shirts Labor Content (minutes/Shirt) | Number of Workers | Time taken per shirt | Time taken per batch |
A | Cutting | 0.25 | 4 | 0.06 | 3.75 |
B1 | Make Collar | 3.90 | 8 | 0.49 | 29.25 |
B2 | Make Cuffs | 2.00 | 4 | 0.50 | 30.00 |
B3 | Make Sleeves | 0.65 | 2 | 0.33 | 19.50 |
B4 | Make Front | 2.50 | 6 | 0.42 | 25.00 |
B5 | Make Back | 1.70 | 4 | 0.43 | 25.50 |
B6 | Join Shoulders | 0.66 | 2 | 0.33 | 19.80 |
B7 | Attach Collar | 1.65 | 4 | 0.41 | 24.75 |
B8 | Attach Sleeves | 1.55 | 4 | 0.39 | 23.25 |
B9 | Stitch down sleeves | 0.65 | 2 | 0.33 | 19.50 |
B10 | Sew side seam | 1.80 | 4 | 0.45 | 27.00 |
B11 | Attach cuffs | 1.55 | 4 | 0.39 | 23.25 |
B12 | Hem Bottom | 1.70 | 4 | 0.43 | 25.50 |
B13 | Inspect | 1.50 | 4 | 0.38 | 22.50 |
B14 | Iron | 1.95 | 4 | 0.49 | 29.25 |
B15 | Fold, Package | 1.75 | 4 | 0.44 | 26.25 |
Total | 25.76 | 64 | 6.23 | 374.05 |
...
...