MGT $3332$ Course Project $($Spring $2024)$

This is a group case assignment. A group cannot have more than $4$ students. All members in a group must contribute equally. You can form your own group. Only one member of the group needs to submit. The cover page should have names of all group members as LAST, FIRST along with their UHD email ID and phone contact. It should also mention percentage of work contributed by each member of the group. If you cannot form group and wish to do this assignment alone, you can do so$.$

Due date: $\frac{4}{30}\frac{?}{2024}.$ No extension!

Alpha Appliances, Inc. $($Assembly Line$)$

Alpha Appliances, Inc. is a major supplier of household appliances based in Texas. Its customer base consists of retailers in US who stock a variety of products including appliances. Alpha has been purchasing bulk of its products from China, Mexico, India, and Thailand. The business has been good.

In past few months, Jay Adams, VP$-$Marketing has been receiving complaints from their many loyal customers. Customers complaints range from increased prices, quality issues, and uncertain and late deliveries of several products. Jay calls a meeting with his sales manager Kathy land, production manager John Wovel, and procurement office Linda Mustang.

This is how the meeting goes:

Jay Adams: Good morning! How are you?

Kathy, John, and Linda respond with a good morning and smile.

Jay: Lately I have been receiving lot of complaints from our customers and that worries me$.$

Linda: What kind of complaints Jay?

Jay: There are several types of complaints. Broadly, they fall in three categories. First type of complaints is about increased prices of our products.

Kathy: Yes, that is true. My team is finding it difficult retaining our loyal customers, let alone find new ones. Our prices have been going up by about $10-12\%$ every year.

John: Why are our prices going up$?$ Is it across all our products, or only some products?

Linda: It is primarily those products that we procure from India. They have raised prices of their products, so we are compelled to raise our prices to maintain a healthy margin.

Jay: Linda, have you explored importing from other countries? Maybe their prices have not gone up that much.

Linda: Yes, I have. The picture in other countries is somewhat similar except China. Chinese suppliers have increased prices but only $2-3\%$ per year.

Jay: So$,$ it seems if we continue to outsource, we have to live with the increased prices! Now, let us address the second issue, which is of quality of products. What do you think is happening?

Linda: We do not seem to have any quality issues with products that we import from Mexico, India and Thailand. Bulk of problems seem to be from products coming from China. We keep buying from Chinese suppliers due to cost advantage.

Jay: That is true, but we are falling behind in our market due to low quality product. We have to have suppliers that will provide quality products.

Kathy: I agree. What is the third issue Jay?

Jay: The third major issue is about uncertain and unpredictable deliveries. Often, we are unable to honor our delivery commitments to our customers. Why is that happening?

Linda: This is happening with most of our supplies in Thailand. I have talked to our suppliers about the issue. They seem to blame the shipping companies for delays.

Jay: After listening to all of you, it seems we must seriously think about stop outsourcing and start home production. We will be in a better position to monitor quality and production deliveries. If we do it right with an efficient production process, we may be able to produce at a competitive cost. John, you are our production manager. What do you think? Should we consider producing in$-$house? Do we have the production capability?

John: Jay, yes, we can produce in$-$house. However, that would require setting assembly lines for our products. My suggestion is that we do so in phases, product by product. Based on our experience with one assembly line, we can decide if we should pursue with other product lines.

Linda: I agree with John. Let us think of which product line we should start with?

Kathy: My suggestion is that we start with ceiling fan production as summer is coming up soon and we expect a surge in demand.

Jay: Sure, I also think so$.$ Does everyone agree that we start with an assembly plant to produce ceiling fans? If this plan works, we can move to other product lines.

All nodded their heads in agreement.

Jay: John, please develop an assembly line that will meet our projected demand with the lowest production cost. We will have anther meeting after two weeks to review the plan.

John Wovel, the production manger, called a meeting of his engineers to develop a production plan. The first step of production plan was to develop a WBS $($Work Breakdown Structure$)$ of fan production and then divide production to smallest possible work elements $($activities$,$ their duration $($p