Ten Decision Strategy of Operations Management

The case describes the operations management of Frito and how the 10 decisions of operations management are applied to the food manufacturing. The case also goes into the production process of Frito Lay and supply chain that facilitates the products of the company. It also goes into the quality of a Frito Lay product and how it’s important to the manufacturing process of Frito Lay.

Problem Statement, Techniques and Models – The problems that the productivity for Frito Lay is that it uses special equipment that is designed for large volume and small variety and is expensive special purpose equipment. This equipment is vital to the production process of Frito Lay that if it stopped working the down time from not producing would be very costly to the company. I think that Frito Lay would benefit from the concept of lean manufacturing. I know that lean manufacturing was developed from the Toyota Company, but its concepts and goals can be applied to manufacturing food products as well. The goals of lean manufacturing are to: Improve quality: To stay competitive in today's marketplace, a company must understand its customers' wants and needs and design processes to meet their expectations and requirements. Eliminate waste: Waste is any activity that consumes time, resources, or space but does not add any value to the product or service. Reduce time: Reducing the time it takes to finish an activity from start to finish is one of the most effective ways to eliminate waste and lower costs. Reduce total costs: To minimize cost, a company must produce only to customer demand. Overproduction increases a company’s inventory costs because of storage needs.

Questions Answers – The 10 decision of production operation as applied Frito Lay is: The design of goods and services- the product development of Frito Lay is done through product development with experiments with test kitchen and submitting them to focus groups. Managing quality – is done through inspections on the farm...