National Cranberry Cooperative (NCC) Case Study Report.docxVIP

L6116 team members: Jia Hao, Abhishek Karmakar, Zhichao Peng, Devang Shah, Jun Xie National Cranberry Cooperative Case Study On February 14, 1971, Hugo Schaeffer, the vice president of operations at National Cranberry Cooperative (NCC) is reviewing the previous year’s process of fruit operations at receiving plant 1 (RP1). He states that they still have high overtime costs, despite spending $75,000 on a new dumper. Trucks are still having to wait to unload fruit at the receiving plant. This report will analyze the current state of RP1, analyze Walliston’s recommendations, and provide justification for implanting the recommendations. In appendix A, a process flow chart is included to describe the process both dry and wet berries go from receiving to shipping. A few assumptions were to be made before beginning to solve the problem. The assumptions that were made for this problem are: An average of 18,000 bbls of berries received on the peak day. On the peak day, working hours were capped at 12 hours. 58% of the berries received on the peak day were wet berries. A constant rate of 200 bbls/hour for each machine in the drying process. A constant rate of 400 bbls/hour for each machine in the separation process. Using these assumptions, calculations were made for the capacity of the bins and each process. These values were used to determine the bottleneck of the process, since the bottleneck will give us an indication of which process is the slowest and causing the delays for the trucks. Total number of wet berries received/day: 18,000 bbls * 0.58 = 10,440 bbls/day. Total number of wet berries received/hour: 10,440 bbls / 12 = 870 bbls/hour. Mixed berry bin capacity: Bins 17-24, total of 8 bins * 250 bbls/bin = 2,000 bbls/bin. Wet berry bin capacity: Bins 25-27, total of 3 bins * 400 bbls/bin = 1,200 bbls/bin. Total capacity for wet berries/day: 2,000 + 1,200 = 3,200 bbls/day. Dechaffing process rate: 1,500 bbls/hour * 3 machines = 4,500 bbls/hour. Drying process rate: 2