Gobbler€™s Pizza was established to produce fresh, packaged 16-inch pizzas to be sold wholesale to grocery stores, convenience stores, and school cafeterias. Gobblers will have 10 production lines with 5 workers on each line. Each worker is responsible for one of the five stages of production: dough, sauce, cheese, toppings, or packaging. The following flowchart of the production lines shows the time needed at each workstation. These time estimates include normal downtime, breaks, and so on. Moving products between stations takes approximately 30 seconds, so the total time to produce one pizza is the total of all the time needed at each step plus 2 minutes for product movement (4 movements at ½ minute each), or 13½ minutes per pizza. Gobbler€™s production facility is organized in a very traditional fashion. Dough preparation, sauce preparation, cheese preparation, topping preparation, and packaging are all done in separate areas of the factory. In addition, employees on the production lines are responsible for only one task.

Required
A. Why would Gobbler€™s choose to arrange their production facility as described?
B. What options might Gobbler€™s consider to improve manufacturing efficiency?
C. What changes to Gobbler€™s manufacturing processes are needed if just-in-time practices areadopted?

Transcribed Image Text:

Toppings → Dough Maker 2 minutes Sauce Maker 2 minutes Cheese Maker 21/2 minutes Packaging 2 minutes → 3 minutes