National Cranberry Coop

What kinds of problems are being experienced? 

One problem that Cranberry National Coop is experiencing is that the capacity of the holding bins that temporarily store the wet processed cranberry is very limited. Once the holding bins are full, the Kiwanee dumper can’t feed into the bin, and thus the trucks can’t empty into the dumper and have to wait.

The capacity issue of the holding bin has two root causes. Number one is that the volume of the holding bin is not big enough. The maximum amount of wet cranberries the bins can hold is 250bbls*8+400bbls*3=3200bbls. Number two is that the capacity of dryer is not high enough. The capacity for wet cranberries processing is limited by the operations with lowest capacity, which is the dryer. The 3 dryers have a maximum total of 600bbls/hr. It takes an average of 7.5mins for a truck to unload. Meaning that during an hour period of time, 24 trucks worth of cranberries will come into the Kiwanee dumper, and that’s equal to 3000bbls/hr. 2100bbls/hr is for wet cranberries. The difference between what’s going in and out is 1500bbls/hr. Meaning that the holding bin for wet cranberries will be filled up in less than 2.5 hrs.

Where is the bottleneck?  What should be done about it?  How can you prove it?  What solution is most cost effective? 

Bottleneck and long term solution

A bottleneck is one process in a chain of processes, such that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain. In here obviously the process with the lowest capacity is the dryer that’s used for drying the wet cranberries. 3 dryers only have a max total of 600bbls/hr. And the process with second lowest capacity is the separator line. I think the most cost effective solution long term is to install 2 more dryers and 1 more separator line.

70% of the cranberries are wet, and that’s equal to 2100bbls/hr wet cranberries for the Kiwanee dumper. With 2 more dryers, the capacity will be 1000bbls/hr. And with one more separator...