National Cranberry Cooperative

National Cranberry Cooperative

Mr. Schaeffer, I have analyzed the metrics and continuous flow process of the RP1 receiving plant and have found many opportunities for improvement. (Appendix B) The information sampled to draw conclusions was derived from data regarding deliveries on September 23rd, 1970, which happened to be the third busiest day of the season. There are many factors that have been deemed to be the current issues that are causing the vendors trucks to experience long wait times as well as overtime issues. The factors causing these issues are lack of proper quality control, varieties of bottlenecks through out the plant, and scheduling.

After breaking out the majority of the deliveries per hour, it seems that there is a bottleneck occurring at the dryers where the wet berry deliveries arriving per hour are commonly exceeding the capacity that they can process. (Appendix A, D, and E). The storage for wet berries is able to handle this for most of the day, but is heading toward a back up in deliveries as this storage is exhausted later in the day. From 6:00pm- 7:00pm there is a significant amount of berries received and with the docks and storage tied up these trucks are waiting to unload for long periods of time. (Appendix C) If we could buy two new dryers it would increase our throughput to exceed the amount of average wet berries received per hour. (Appendix A). This would add up to $4,653.58 potentially of barrels produced an hour. Theoretically, disregarding the other bottleneck I haven’t mentioned yet, this would reduce the inventories building in the storage bins as well, and would save on OT. Over time will be saved as there would not be a hold up for trucks waiting to unload due to full bins. The $50,000 investment could be recouped in a relatively short term period, and would help prepare for the potential growth in wet berries harvested in next years crops.

The next problem in the process is the subjectivity involved with the quality grading in regards to the shipments received initially. The data I have received has indicated that the chief berry receiver has graded half of the No. 3 berries wrong which should have been classified as No. 2’s. If you analyze the statistics (Appendix G), it is clear that the company could have saved $150,000 last season if the berries were properly graded from receipt as half were misjudged. I would highly recommend the light