Case 1: Custom Gear, Inc.
1.0 Introduction
Custom Gear, Inc. is a manufacturer of custom made gears ranging in weight from a few ounces to over 50 pounds. The gears are made of different metals depending on the customer’s requirements. Custom Gear sells its products primarily to engineering research and development laboratories or very small manufacturers. The president of Custom Gear decided to accept a few larger orders for 100 gears or more. Although lower prices were accepted on these orders, they helped pay the overhead. It was found that the large orders caused many of the small orders to wait for a long time before being processed. As a result some deliveries of small orders were late.
Roger Rhodes had faced many problems and the major problem is not having an efficient production line. The current production process is inefficient and disorganized. After consideration of several alternatives, we have found some major problems that occur in Custom Gear, Inc. The problems that have been analyzed are the problems in terms of raw materials, production process, factory layout, poor management and others.
The problems come from the process design that is inefficient. They also are lacking an organized quality control program. This has resulted in the doubling of production times and a six percent return rate on orders. As the president, he needs to take his responsibility by doing actions to solve all the problems that occurred. The actions that should be properly working and produce efficient results. So, Roger Rhodes as a President should take many actions to have a good operation management for Custom Gear and also need to think the ways for maintaining Custom Gear’s level of productivity.
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2.0
2.1
Question Analysis
What are the major problems being faced by Custom Gear?
First problem that have been faced by Custom Gear is the shortage of raw materials. Shortage of raw materials becomes a norm for various industries especially...