rewrite need today
striker101
wereite_problem.docxPROBLEM - Is it feasible to reduce employee size or can there be more shifts, night shifts or swing shifts?
CanGo has a warehouse and it is divided into groups by functions like; holding area, packing area, book storage area, gift wrap area, and etc. We have seen the current process flow’s layout of CanGo warehouse. There was an intermittent process. Especially in the process of picking the books, they are using a job shop, so the intermittent process. It uses more flexible and general-purpose equipment because of the variety of products and services they produce. There are lots of different customers with different needs and wants. For example, a customer will order a book from bestseller, a book from wholesaler, and one from the publisher. All of them has a different packaging times. So operators should serve customized. All operators are waiting at the computer and pick stations and receive orders on-screen. It is a long process to find and get a book from the shelves. So, the book storage area is a very busy place, which gets congested at times. Operators may also find themselves running into each other, since as many as eight operators could be running to the same shelf at the same time. It causes a bottleneck at the book storage area. And Jack diagrammed a new flow for CanGo, for this reason. It incorporates an automated storage and retrieval system. It seems like an assembly line process. Because there is no customization and there is an automated process. This automatizing doesn’t need a lot of employee. This new assembly line process is more efficient (low per unit costs).
RECOMMENDATION : CanGo needs a technological improvement in their warehouse. There are two shifts in existing system. 6 operators on the first shift and 2 operators on the second shift pick books at the average rate of 45 books per hour. So, an operator can reply only 7 or 8 requests in an hour. They cannot reach a different efficiency by increasing the shifts. Because, they will use another 6 or 8 person in the shifts. And a human being’s capacity will not be different from these existing operators. A new operator cannot pick 30 books in an hour. Also, they cannot employ more than 8 people, because sometimes eight operators could be running to the same shelf at the same time. So they need a creative solution. Maybe, they will open a new warehouse. But developing a new warehouse has lot of costs like; land, building, security, insurance, employment, and etc. So, Jack’s new diagram will be very useful for CanGo. Because they only need to modify their existing warehouse. And we are sure that, it is cheaper than opening a new warehouse. Implementing a new technology replaces the functionality of existing workers. We think that CanGo should go to a automated system and also to downsizing[footnoteRef:1].It will be more efficient than increasing the number of shifts. [1: In a business enterprise, downsizing is reducing the number of employees on the operating payroll.]
