Waymouth Manufacturing operates a contract manufacturing plant located in Dublin, Ireland. The plant provides a variety of electronics products and components to consumer goods manufacturers around the world. Cycle time is a critical success factor for Waymouth, which has developed a number of measures of manufacturing speed. Waymouth has studied the matter and found that competitive contract manufacturers have manufacturing cycle times (MCE) of about 40 percent. When last calculated, Waymouth’s MCE was 35 percent. Some key measures from the recent month’s production, averaged over all the jobs during that period, are as follows:
Activity Average Time
New product development ......... 30 hours
Materials handling ............. 3
Order setup ............... 6
Machine maintenance ........... 3
Order scheduling .............. 1
Inspection of completed order ........ 5
Pack and move to storage or ship ...... 2
Manufacturing assembly .......... 23
Order taking and checking ........ 3
Receiving and stocking raw materials ..... 6
Inspection of raw materials ......... 2

Required
Determine the manufacturing cycle efficiency (MCE) for the recent month. What can you infer from the MCE you calculated?