Design for Supply

Recommendations for The Swift Company

There are a variety of streamlining, cycle time and general cost-savings measures that the Swift Company could implement to improve their current supply chain process.

In terms of Manufacturing Operations, the bottleneck in the process is found in the molding step, as it takes 3 minutes to produce one table. Attaching the footpads takes about 1 minute and 35 seconds, and adding the trim is an additional 2 minutes and 9 seconds. If the second and third steps are combined, the total time is 3 minutes and 44 seconds, allowing for more than enough time to receive a constant supply of work-in-progress inventory from Step 1. Based on this information, it is unnecessary to hold an hour’s worth of finished inventory between each step of the process.

It is mentioned that the Swift’s finishing plant is very small, so it may be possible to move the finishing operations and the associated employees to the Main Plant, and to close the Finishing Plant. The first step of finishing- gluing the decorative top on to the backing- could be completed concurrently with the earlier manufacturing functions, as the work-in-progress Duro product is not required in this step. Furthermore, the steps of gluing the decorative backing to the table, and boxing and labelling can be combined to avoid the need to hold any work in process inventory at the finishing plant, saving on inventory holding costs, and space. Swift should analyze their historic sales to determine the most popular styles and to also eliminate the iterations that ‘don’t look right’. Forecasting ahead, Swift should produce more of the popular styles in advance (and maintain a certain safety stock for each iteration sold) and store these items on their current large delivery trucks to be sent out for immediate delivery upon receipt of an order. Depending on the size and variability of the average order, Swift may also be able to avoid the cost of maintaining a finished goods warehouse, and solely store their inventory entirely on large delivery trucks for popular items, and the smaller vans for the less common iterations. Once the safety stock of a particular

Main Plant Work in Process Inventory: 20 + 38 + 28= 86 DurosFinishing Plant Work in Process Inventory: 42 + 22 + 30 + 26= 120 Duros

Cycle time for 1 Duro under the Old System:Molding- 3 minAttach Footpads- 1 minute and 35 secondsAdd Trim- 2 minutes and 9 secondsStack and Load- 1 minute and 40 secondsTrip to Finishing Plant- 1 hour and 30 minutesUnloading- 1 minute and 26 secondsGlue decorative top on backing- 2 minutes and 44 secondsGlue backing to table- 2 minutesBox and Label- 2 minutes and 18 seconds

Stack and load- 1 minute and 46 secondsTrip to the Warehouse- 1 hour and 30 minutesTotal cycle time: 3 hours, 18 minutes and 38 seconds

Cycle time for 1 Duro under the New SystemMolding (and Gluing decorative top on backing done concurrently)- 3 minutesAttach Footpads and Add Trim (and Gluing decorative top on backing done concurrently)- 3 minutes and 44 secondsGlue decorative backing to table, box and label- 4 minutes and 18 secondsStack and Load- 1 minute and 46 secondsTotal cycle time: 12 minutes and 48 seconds