National Cranberry

Memorandum:

To: xxxxxxx

From: XXXXX

Date: xxxxxxxx

Re: Production Concerns

Upon reviewing the National Cranberry Cooperative operational processes and problems that you have mentioned, I completely agree some changes need to be made to overcome the trucker frustrations. But at the same time cut back on the overtime expenses we have been incurring. Although these two issues are the most important opportunities facing us, I have also found some further issues that maybe affecting our overall profitability and would like to provide an analysis of our operations here at Receiving Plant #1. One problem is taking place where the grading of the processed berries is done and I believe this is contributing to a majority of the overtime. I have found that half of the berries that are currently being graded as top quality are actually not and are not correctly being priced following the extra premiums paid on the top quality berries. The grading issues in addition to the problems you have mentioned have led me to creating a process flow diagram which can be seen in Appendix A; this gives us an overview of all processes from arrival to departure of each truck. By making these small but needed improvements we will reduce the overtime costs and also reduces the waiting time for the delivery trucks, making our process more efficient and profitable.

After reviewing the process flow as seen in appendix B, it becomes apparent that a main bottleneck exists at the drying stage. This is because after using bins 17-24 for the wet berries and filling up all dual-processing units with wet berries first, due to the wet berries needing to be processed first before using any units for the dry berries, is why is this part of the process is our bottleneck.

Eighteen trucks will be delivering every hour and it takes an average of 7.5 minutes to unload the truck’s raw fruit. We have an immediate backup problem as there is an hour and 15 minutes worth of trucks waiting when we open the...