Peas (case study 28) by Stuart Chambers and Tammy Helander

1.What are the capacities at each main stage of the pea processing?

2 Which is the bottleneck process, and how is this managed to maximise throughput?

3 (a) What is the design capacity of the overall operation?

(b) What is the effective capacity?

(c) Calculate the efficiency and utilisation for the operation over the current

years pea season. Would this give a good indication of the factory performance, for example in benchmarking against other factories in the group, such

as frozen pizza manufacturing?

4 Prepare graphs showing:

(a) the daily output compared to design and effective capacity

(b) cumulative output compared to cumulative design and effective capacity

What do these tell us about the operation?

5 Summarise the reasons why capacity is lost on some days in mid-season.

What could be done to reduce this problem?

6 Do you think that John Lincolns desire to extend the pea harvest period is the

best strategy for the overall operation?