Exercise 2 Grid Analysis

Exercise 2: Use of the Grid Analysis

A Grid Analysis is a useful tool that is used in the decision making process for many companies by operations managers. This tool is most useful when there are more than one underlying alternative to choose from, it helps in assigning weights to each factor. It helps by identifying your options and factors and applying a weighted score by relative importance to each proposed option. The scores are then multiplied by the weight of the factor and summed to present a value based option. In order for the Grid Analysis to be an accurate and useful tool the correct value must be available to represent a factor in the critical point and determine the correct factor to represent the analysis. The factors that are chosen must be viable to the decision being analyzed.

In the Toyota manufacturing case the grid analysis is used to determine which plan should be used to produce the Lexus RX 330 line. The locations that are options for the production fo this line are TMMI in Indiana, TMMK in Kentucky, NOMMI in California and TMMC in Canada. While all these locations have the capacity and production technology needed to produce the RX 330 there are many additional factors that must be analyzed in order to make the most optimal decision. The Grid Analysis will consist of two individual grids, one in which will display the grid without the weights and one that will display the grid with the weighted factors. Each factor will be having a value ranging from 1 to 5, where 5 is extreme significance and 1 is no significance. The grid will then take each value and multiply it by the weight to get a total score in which can be used in determining the overall correlation to which location should be presentation to produce the RX 330 line.

There are many factors that can contribute to this decision making process such as internal also known as endogenous factors, as well as external also known as exogenous factors. The internal factors are those...