Response to Classmates Discussions

Week 6 - Discussion Forum 2

Andrew Magistri

MondaySep 14 at 9:13am

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Hi everyone!

An organization that I am familiar with overproduction leading to waste is the amusement park world.  Drawing on personal experience, much of the product drawn into the warehouses is lost due to poorly kept warehouse.  It has been acknowledged that the waste is high, but the costs of product lost is built into the budget.  Comparing costs in repairing the warehouse or "x" amount of product lost has been measured that the ongoing loss of product is lower than present value of the warehouse repairs at the current moment in time.

As most product is delivered directly from the manufacturers overseas, it is difficult to carry a just-in-time delivery method to chase demands.  However, better inventory management techniques that include more appropriate forecasting tools could lead towards better lean techniques in chase demand strategy.  Much of current strategy relies on monthly delivery of product that leads to over stocking with much of the product rolling over month-over-month based on demand.

Cutting the delivery in half by carrying bi-weekly deliveries may carry higher delivery costs, but would likely result in substantially lower product waste costs due to poor warehouse upkeep.

 

-Andrew

Collier, D. A, & Evans, J. R. (2019). Operations and supply chain management. Cengage Learning.

Julie Wolfe

SundaySep 13 at 1:08pm

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Waste-producing companies that come to mind are those that generate plastic packaging for their products. According to data collected from BreakFreeFromPlastic, the world’s top three plastic polluters are Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo (Segran, 2019). Since these three companies make bottled drinks, it is not surprising that they are the top plastic polluters. However, these three companies were named the top plastic polluters in the previous year and have not reduced their ranking (Segran, 2019). Though the bottles themselves are 100% recyclable, they use a large amount of new plastic.

Lean production is focused on eliminating waste from the manufacturing process. One of the countermeasures for inventory in Lean production is to bring in raw materials only as they are needed (Collier & Evans, 2019). Coca-Cola can do this by reducing amount of raw plastic material it buys for manufacturing bottles and increasing the amount of recycled plastic used in the creation of bottles. Currently, 24% of the plastic Coca-Cola uses for bottles is recycled plastic (Coca-Cola, 2019). The company is aiming to bring this to percentage to 70% by the end of the year, which will reduce the use of new plastic by around 16,000 tons a year (Coca-Cola, 2019). With its current standing as the top plastic waste producer in the world, I believe Coca-Cola should look to increase this number to 100% as soon as possible.

References

Coca-Cola Australia. (2019). What role can Coca-Cola play in solving the plastic crisis?

https://www.coca-colacompany.com/au/faqs/coca-cola-plastic-crisis (Links to an external site.)

Collier, D. A, & Evans, J. R. (2019). Operations and supply chain management. Cengage Learning.

Segran, E. (2019, November 1). Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo are the world’s biggest plastic polluters—again.

FastCompany. https://www.fastcompany.com/90425011/coca-cola-nestle-and-pepsico-are-the-worlds-biggest-plastic-polluters-again