Shelby

ASSIGNMENT National Cranberry Cooperative

This case is an introduction to process flow analysis, which helps understand how a firm produces its goods or services. This is essential whether you are acting as a consultant seeking to improve a process, or as an analyst interested in valuating a firm. The following questions will prepare you for class discussion by guiding you to think critically about a particular business process flow.

Questions

1. What are the most critical problems facing National Cranberry that Mr. Schaeffer must address? 2. For your numerical analysis, consider a day where 18,000 barrels of berries arrive of which 70% are wet. Assume that trucks arrive evenly spaced throughout an 11-hour day starting at 7:00 am, and that processing operations (i.e. receiving, dechaffing, milling, etc.) also start at 7:00 am. Estimate the number of hours the plant must operate to complete the day’s work. 3. When during the day would trucks be waiting? How much truck waiting time would you expect? 4. Suppose the cost of renting trucks with drivers is $18.00/hour. Based on your analysis, what recommendations would you make to Mr. Schaeffer? 5. Suppose the cost of converting dry berry holding bins so they can store either water-harvested or dry berries drops to $2,000 per bin. If everything else remains unchanged, how would this cost reduction affect your recommendations? 6. What is the capacity (in bbl. per hour) of receiving plant 1 (RP1)? (over)

40000, Chayet

National Cranberry Cooperative

2

NOTE: Although this case requires analysis, I believe that good, clear conceptual thinking is required to understand this case and that the analysis can be done best manually.

Assumptions

Let me clear up some ambiguities in the case: • Assume that the dryers process all wet berries at 200 bbl/hr. • Assume that the effective capacity of each separator line is 400 bbl/hr. • Assume that the travel time between any two processing operations is negligible, and that...