Question

Question 4 (30 marks) According to Richard Lansburgh and William Spriegel (1995), "Scheduling involves establishing the amount of work to be done and the time each element of the work will start, or the order of work. (a) Why is Scheduling important in Operations & Logistics Management and explain the factors affecting Scheduling? (15 marks) (b) The Gantt chart is a scheduling method used in Operations Management Explain the use and importance of the Gantt Chart (5 marks). (c) In a food manufacturing factory, there is only one machine which can produce items A to F. Based on customer demands, the Production Manager has determined that the sequence of producing these items are as shown in the table:

Answer 1

a. Scheduling is an scientific approach of assigning activities on a time bound manner to bring a standardisation to the various process in an operation. Scheduling organises the overall cycle which helps to improve the efficiency of the process.Scheduling can be alternatively defined as assigning a time component to processes and resources. It allocates resources and readies equipment at a time when the process has to start so that the flow is not interrupted.

• With proper planning its easier to meet deadlines as each process in a work can be allocated times accordingly and all necessary resources can be made available at the commencement
• Scheduling ensures that no process is left out as everything is planned for
• With proper planning, bottlenecks and acculumations can be identified and dealt with
• Since its a theoretical plan and a continuous process, feedback can be taken and adjustments can be plugged in with minimum deveation from the plan
• Due to high level of planning the workforce power is not wasted
• Scheduling process ensures that time wastage is minimal
• With scheduling plans in place, capacity planning ahead of the start becomes way easier
• Tracking the process becomes very easy because its very streamlined
• It helps to sequence various works.

There are numerous factors that affect scheduling

• Availability of raw materials
• Availability of work force
• Availability of production facilities
• Quality of work force
• Customer demand
• Lead times of various process
• Work In Progress inventory
• Storage facillities
• Customer quality expectation
• Customer promised delivery date
• Channel Inventory

b. Gantt chart is a graphical schematic representation of the processes one a timeframe. It represents the duration of each works in a sequential manner making it very easy for anyone to depict it. With gantt chart we can even mark the deadlines which makes it convinient for it to be tracked. Additionally Gantt chart also points out wasted time between processes. Resource allocation becomes easy as we can find out processes running parallely very easily.

c.

m t t f S S >T wls t w t f S S m t wt f S S m t wt f S S mt W 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 00 3 1 2 6 Production Duration in 45 Sequence days 1 Item A B 1 А BB B Production Quantity 500 1500 1000 1500 500 500 с 2 3 4 5 6 3 2 3 с I c D D D D 1 E E F 1 15 DAYS

For one round of production it will take 15 days given sundays and public holidays are non-working