ase Study $3\mathrm{.}2$: The MasterChip Electronics Company

Sally Jackson, production manager of the MasterChip Electronics Company, was having another frustrating day. The final assembly area was woefully behind schedule, and several large orders were several days, and some several weeks, behind the promised delivery date. Customers were not happy and were giving lots of angry messages to the sales force. At the same time, some of the work areas in the early portions of the production process apparently did not have enough work. Sally viewed this as an equally important issue, since she could think of only two possible solutions$--$either let the people stand around and do nothing or have them work ahead on some of the components even though no order existed for those components. Working ahead was risky because their products competed in a market where customers could demand $($one option, for example, could go for months with no demand and then all at once have a very large demand as one customer ordered a large number of a product with that option$).$ That was not likely to change since most of their customers were large retail chain stores. Letting people stand around was also bad, since she was evaluated on labor efficiency and utilization, and a worker not working would make those numbers look very bad.

She would like to be able to send some of the workers home for a day or part of a day, but the local union agreement prohibited that. She also liked to think about the possibility of using some of those workers to help out in another area $($final assembly, in this current situation$),$ but the union agreement also had specific work classifications for each worker, and those could not be violated. Even if that were possible, she knew it could be a problem since most of the production workers in the area with little work knew almost nothing about how the final assembly area worked, and that could generate lots of quality problems.

Sally made a note to herself to develop some specific numbers for her weekly meeting with the human resources manager. Every week she looked at the demand for each area and put together a set of recommendations for laying off some workers in one area and calling back some workers for another area. She knew that was allowed, on a week by week basis, under the union contract, but she still hated that task. Even though she could usually come up with some good numbers, she could not neglect the following impacts: These workers often were the sole source of income for their families, and even a week of layoff would likely imply hardships on their families.For the second part of the assignment, complete a report based on the inventory process you just went through.Describe the issues you experienced with the counting of the letter $$o$.$ Was reconciliation required? Why or why not?

Research issues with physical inventory counts. List three common issues, and identify some of the solutions that could be implemented to resolve these common issues.

What would you do to improve the accuracy of counting the letter $$o$?$

Summarize your thoughts regarding the inventory process you just went through $$ what conclusion did you come to$?$

Attach your Inventory Summary sheet to your report.Inventory Summary Sheet

Date:

Counter:

Name:

Auditor:

Count # Inventory Ticket Number Part Number Description Unit of measure Quantity Count correct Reconciliation required$-$Complete required action

$1$

$2$

$3$

$4$

Reconciliation Required Action

Count # Cause of incorrect count

Corrective action to be taken

$1$

$2$

$3$

$4$