Anonymous Company Case Study

Case Study: Anonymous Company

Eo Martin is a production manager for Anonymous Company, and he is very concerned about the way the company currently control its production. The method used is a manual in which job order tickets are written and production progress is followed through the shop by production expenditers. A number of scheduling and load charts are used to enable the production control people to record and visually observe order progress. This method worked fine during the early years of the firm. When there were very few employees and the production manager could keep information about the few in-process jobs in her head. Mr. Martin is one of the original employee of Anonymous and can remember their original “shop” in the garage of Martin Masilungan, company founder and current president. Mr. Masilungan had designed several unique digital control devices for the petroleum industry during the late 1970’s, and these systems were the first products of the company.

Because of the company continuing success, the firm has had to move twice to a larger production facilities during the past 15 years. The company now has an extensive product line and many customers for digital control devices, which are used in both the continuous process and discrete product industries. In process inventory is extensive and raw material storage has been enlarged twice during the past five years. Mr. Martin feels that the current production control methods are just not adequate for the existing manufacturing environment. He feels that a database production planning and control method, like MRP, is needed, and he has discussed this with other production management personnel.

Mr. Martin has been surprised at the reaction of other members of the Anonymous management when he discusses MRP with them: some are for it and others against it. The arguments against MRP go along with the following lines: (1) Production clerks are comfortable with the current manual system; (2)...