Case $17\mathrm{.}1$ Reducing In$-$Process Inventory

Jim Lee, vice president for manufactu ing of the Northeru Airplane Company, is exasperated. His walk through the company's most important plant this moraing has left him in a foul nood. However. he now can went his temper at Jerry Carstairs, the plant's production unuager, who has just been sumumoned to Jin's office.

"Jerry, I just got back from walking throigh the plant, and I au very upset." "What is the problem, Jim?" "Well, you know how much I $$ been empitasizing the need to cul down on our in$-$process inventory." "Yes, we've been working hard on that," responds Jerry, "Well, bot hard enongh!" Jim raises his woice even highen. $"$Do you know what I foukl by the presses?" $"$No$."-$Five metal sheets still waiting to be formed into wing sections. And then. right next door it the inspection station. I$3$ wing sections! The inspeclor was inspecting one of then, but the other $12$ were just silting there. You know we have a conjle hundred thousand dollars tied up in each of those wing sections. So between the presses and the inspection station, we have a few million bucks worth of terribly expensive metal just sitting there. We can't have thatl"

The chagrined Jerty Carstairs tries to respond. "Yes. Jin. I au weil aware that that inspection station is a bottleneck. It usually isn't nealy as bat as you found it this morning. but it is a bottleneck. Much less so for the presses. You really caught us on a bad morning." "I sure hope so$,"$ retorts Jim, "but you need to prevent anything neally this bad happening even occasionally. What do you propose to do about ir$?"$ Jerry now brightens noticeably in his response, "Well actually, I ve already been working on this problem. I have a couple proposais on the table and I have asked an operations research analyst on my staff to analyze these proposals and report back with recominendations." "Great," responds Jim. "glad to see yon are on top of the problem. Give this your highest priority and report back to me as soon as possible." "Will do$,"$ promises Jerry.