A case study is a puzzle to be solved, so develop your proposed solution by following these five steps:

1. Read the case study to identify key issues and underlying issues. These issues are the principles and concepts of the course area that apply to the situation described in the case study.
2. Record the facts from the case study relevant to the principles and concepts of the course area issues. The case may have extraneous information not relevant to the current course area. Your ability to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information is an important aspect of case analysis, as it will inform the focus of your answers.
3. Describe in some detail the actions needed to correct the situation.
4. Consider how you would support your solution with examples from experience, current real-life examples, or cases from textbooks.
5. Complete this initial analysis and then read the case study questions. Typically, you will already have the answers so now you can add the details and/or analytical tools required to solve the case.

• Read the National Cranberry Cooperative Case Study
• When solving the National Cranberry case, avoid getting into too much detail, rather keep the big picture in mind and make the following assumptions:
  • The Flow Time of the National Cranberry process (starting after the holding bins) is 1 hour (i.e., it takes 1 hour for a cranberry to flow through the plant).
  • During a high-volume period, the dryer operator can start at whatever time you choose, rather than 11 AM as shown in Figure E,
  • The amount of inventory other than in the bins is negligible.
• Write a 2-3-page double-spaced paper that addresses the following:
  • What are the problems facing receiving plant No. 1 (RP1)?
  • Draw a Process Flow Diagram of the cranberry process beginning with Receiving and ending with the Bailey Mills (i.e., ignore Sorting and Shipping at the end of the process).
  • Compute the Capacity in barrels per hour of each process step.
  • Consider a peak harvest day (18,000 barrels of berries unloaded with 70% of them wet harvested). Assume that trucks arrive uniformly over a period of 12 hours. Identify the Bottleneck of the process.