XYZ company provides labor and space for the manufacturing and assembly operations and stocking a variety of inventory items for production such as wire, cables, some electronic components, etc. XYZ company orders a variety of components and raw materials by contract. The company recently hired 100 part-time employees working four to six-hour shifts. Skilled employees must do several raw material conversions for packaging—there are currently three (3) such employees. The plant layout is a typical process layout - machines of similar types are located together. Each machine and employee must be scheduled over the day and the standard time period for planning is one (1) hour. Material handling is mainly done manually, although the company would like to consider conveyors or other automation to aid in automating their processes.   XYZ company forecasts planned production for two (2) years on a rolling quarterly basis. Often, the customer changes the forecast, and these changes can occur as late as during the week of production. If the forecast increases significantly, then components can be shipped overnight to facilitate the production of materials and assembly, but typically, XYZ incurs the overnight freight costs. Schedule changes can impact both employees and machines. Currently, XYZ has five (5) customers across their three major product areas but is evaluating expanding. ABC Solutions now represents sixty percent (60%) of XYZ’s business and causes about seventy-five percent (75%) of the schedule changes due to constant product configuration changes. Any customer-supplied components are shipped to the company’s warehouses and then are trucked to one of the company’s subsidiaries. The components are inspected for quality in XYZ’s facility. XYZ estimates that customers have 30-100 individual end-products (per customer) made in their plant. What are the schedules and inventory plans based on the forecast and potential changes?

XYZ company provides labor and space for the manufacturing and assembly operations and stocking a variety of inventory items for production such as wire, cables, some electronic components, etc. XYZ company orders a variety of components and raw materials by contract. The company recently hired 100 part-time employees working four to six-hour shifts. Skilled employees must do several raw material conversions for packaging—there are currently three (3) such employees.

The plant layout is a typical process layout - machines of similar types are located together. Each machine and employee must be scheduled over the day and the standard time period for planning is one (1) hour. Material handling is mainly done manually, although the company would like to consider conveyors or other automation to aid in automating their processes.  

XYZ company forecasts planned production for two (2) years on a rolling quarterly basis. Often, the customer changes the forecast, and these changes can occur as late as during the week of production. If the forecast increases significantly, then components can be shipped overnight to facilitate the production of materials and assembly, but typically, XYZ incurs the overnight freight costs. Schedule changes can impact both employees and machines. Currently, XYZ has five (5) customers across their three major product areas but is evaluating expanding. ABC Solutions now represents sixty percent (60%) of XYZ’s business and causes about seventy-five percent (75%) of the schedule changes due to constant product configuration changes. Any customer-supplied components are shipped to the company’s warehouses and then are trucked to one of the company’s subsidiaries. The components are inspected for quality in XYZ’s facility. XYZ estimates that customers have 30-100 individual end-products (per customer) made in their plant.

What are the schedules and inventory plans based on the forecast and potential changes?