Castner Corporation is considering implementation of a JIT inventory system. The company’s industrial engineer recently conducted a study to determine the average number of days spent in each activity of the production process. The following table summarizes her findings:

Production Activity Number of Days

Inspecting materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Storing materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Moving materials into production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Setting up production equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Cutting materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Bending materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Assembling finished products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Painting finished products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Instructions

a. Identify Castner’s value-added production activities.

b. Identify Castner’s non-value-added production activities.

c. Calculate Castner’s total cycle time.

d. Determine Castner’s manufacturing efficiency ratio.

e. Which of the above activities might be reduced or eliminated if Castner implemented a JIT system?

f. What ethical issues might be related to eliminating some of the non-value-added activities?