Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attemptedCuthbert is based in Ceeland and manufacture
Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted
Cuthbert is based in Ceeland and manufactures jackets for use in very cold environments by mountaineers and skiers. It also supplies the armed forces in several countries with variants of existing products, customised by the use of different coloured fabrics, labels and special fastenings for carrying equipment. Cuthbert incurs high costs on design and advertising in order to maintain the reputation of the brand.
Each jacket is made up of different shaped pieces of fabric called ‘components’. These components are purchased by Cuthbert from an external supplier. The external supplier is responsible for ensuring the quality of the components and the number of purchased components found to be defective is negligible. The cost of the components forms 80% of the direct cost of each jacket, and the prices charged by Cuthbert’s supplier for the components are the lowest in the industry. There are three stages to the production process of each jacket, which are each located in different parts of the factory:
Stage 1 – Sewing
The fabric components are sewn together by a machinist. Any manufacturing defects occurring after sewing has begun cannot be rectified, and finished garments found to be defective are heavily discounted, or in the case of bespoke variants, destroyed.
Stage 2 – Assembly
The garments are filled with insulating material and sewn together for the final time.
Stage 3 – Finishing
Labels, fastenings and zips are sewn to the finished garments. Though the process for attaching each of these is similar, machinists prefer to work only on labels, fastenings or zips to maximise the quantity which they can sew each hour.
Jackets are produced in batches of a particular style. in a range of sizes. Throughout production, the components required for each batch of jackets are accompanied by a paper batch card which records the production processes which each batch has undergone. The batch cards are input into a production spreadsheet so that the stage of completion of each batch can be monitored and the position of each batch in the factory is recorded.
There are 60 machinists working in the sewing department, and 40 in each of the assembly and finishing departments. All the machinists are managed by 10 supervisors whose duties include updating the batch cards for work done and inputting this into a spreadsheet, as well as checking the quality of work done by machinists. The supervisors report to the factory manager, who has overall responsibility for the production process.
Machinists are paid an hourly wage and a bonus according to how many items they sew each week, which usually comprises 60% of their total weekly wages.
Supervisors receive an hourly wage and a bonus according to how many items their team sews each week. The factory manager receives the same monthly salary regardless of production output. All employees are awarded a 5% annual bonus if Cuthbert achieves its budgeted net profit for the year.
Recently, a large emergency order of jackets for the Ceeland army was cancelled by the customer as it was not delivered on time due to the following quality problems and other issues in the production process:
– A supervisor had forgotten to input several batch cards and as a result batches of fabric components were lost in the factory and replacements had to be purchased.
– There were machinists available to sew buttons onto the jackets, but there was only one machinist available who had been trained to sew zips. This caused further delay to production of the batch.
– When the quality of the jackets was checked prior to despatch, many of them were found to be sewn incorrectly as the work had been rushed. By this time the agreed delivery date had already passed, and it was too late to produce a replacement batch.
This was the latest in a series of problems in production at Cuthbert, and the directors have decided to use business process reengineering (BPR) in order to radically change the production process.
The proposal being considered as an application of BPR is the adoption of ‘team working’ in the factory, the three main elements of which are as follows:
1. Production lines would re-organise into teams, where all operations on a particular product type are performed in one place by a dedicated team of machinists.
2. Each team of machinists would be responsible for the quality of the finished jacket, and for the first time, machinists would be encouraged to bring about improvements in the production process. There would no longer be the need to employ supervisors and the existing supervisors would join the teams of machinists.
3. The number of batches in production would be automatically tracked by the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags attached to each jacket. This would eliminate the need for paper batch cards, which are currently input into a spreadsheet by the supervisors.
You have been asked as a performance management consultant to advise the board on whether business process reengineering could help Cuthbert overcome the problems in its production process.
Required:
(a) Advise how the proposed use of BPR would influence the operational performance of Cuthbert. (14 marks)
(b) Evaluate the effectiveness of the current reward systems at Cuthbert, and recommend and justify how these systems would need to change if the BPR project goes ahead. (11 marks)
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