Scheduling Across the Supply Chain Executive Summary Essay

Scheduling Across the Supply Chain Executive Summary - Essay Example Subassembly of the lawnmower occurs within the traditional manufacturing line of the company, but the solar charges follow a different manufacturing process. This patented technology was developed by the R&D department. The company purchased a small building whose only purpose was to produce the solar chargers. The executive staff wanted to maintain control of the trade secrets associated with the solar charger production. The weekly production of solar chargers is delivered to corporate headquarters. For the first six months the forecasted production of the lawnmowers is 1000 units per month. The monthly production of green lawnmower is going to follow a 3:1 production ratio. For every three electric power lawnmower produced one solar powered mower will be manufactured. The green lawnmower project underway at John Deere must consider the effects of equipment availability. The solar powered production line depends on the production capabilities of the solar battery line which is independent of the production of the mower. The equipment to produce the solar panels used in the chargers has a short life span and must be replaced on a quarterly basis. There is only one supplier of the specialized equipment. If the replacement equipment is not ready on time bottlenecks could occur. A bottleneck occurs when a low capacity part of a system creates a constraint that reduces the capacity of the whole system (Heizer & Render, 1996). The company is also having problems training personnel to work at the solar charger production facility. The time to train employees to obtain the specialized skills needed to produce these items was miscalculated. The learning curve is much slower than anticipated. The learning curve stipulates that as employees repeat a particul ar process they gain skill and efficiency and production time improvements are achieved (Chase & Jacobs & Aquilano). It is taking eight to ten weeks