Introduction to Operations Management /: MGT 311

‫المملكة العربية السعودية‬
‫وزارة التعليم‬
‫الجامعة السعودية اإللكترونية‬

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ministry of Education
Saudi Electronic University

College of Administrative and Financial Sciences

Assignment 2
Introduction to Operations Management (MGT 311)
Due Date: 01/11/2025 @ 23:59
Course Name: Introduction to Operations
Management
Course Code: MGT 311

Student’s Name:

Semester: First

CRN:

Student’s ID Number:

Academic Year:2025-26-1st

For Instructor’s Use only
Instructor’s Name:
Students’ Grade:
Marks Obtained/Out of 10

Level of Marks: High/Middle/Low

General Instructions – PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY
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The Assignment must be submitted on Blackboard (WORD format only) via allocated
folder.
Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted.
Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented, marks may be reduced
for poor presentation. This includes filling your information on the cover page.
Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.
Late submission will NOT be accepted.
Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other
resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font. No
pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).
Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted.

Learning Outcomes:

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To designing profitable services that provide high level of quality to
satisfy business needs.
To ensure that the services delivered are reasonable and relevant to
the customers.
To gain an understanding of the business rules and ensure if the
results are in alignment with the organizational goals.

Go through the given case scenario
‘There must be a better way of running this place!’ said Dean Hammond,
recently recruited General Manager of Boys and Boden, as he finished a
somewhat stressful conversation with a complaining customer, a large and
loyal local building contractor.
‘We had six weeks to make their special staircase, and we are still late! I’ll
have to persuade one of the joiners to work overtime this weekend to get
everything ready for Monday. We never seem to get complaints about
quality, as our men always do an excellent job … but there is usually a big
backlog of work, and something always gets finished late, so how should we
set priorities? We could do the most profitable work first, or the work for our
biggest customers, or the jobs which are most behind on. In practice, we try
to satisfy everyone as best we can, but inevitably someone’s order will be
late. In theory, each job should be quite profitable, since we build into the
price a big allowance for waste, and for timber defects. And we know the
work content of almost any task we would have to do; this is the basis of our
estimating system. But, overall, the department is disappointingly
unprofitable, and most problems seem to end up with a higher-thananticipated cost, and with late deliveries!’
Boys and Boden was a small, successful, privately-owned timber and
building materials merchant based in a small town. Over the years it had
established a large Joinery Department, which made doors, windows,

staircases and other timber products, all to the exact special requirements of
the customers, mostly comprising numerous local and regional builders. In
addition, the joiners would cut and prepare special orders of timber, such as
non-standard sections and special profiles, including old designs of skirting
board, sometimes at very short notice, and often even while the customers
waited. Typically, for larger joinery items, the customer provided simple
dimensioned sketches of the required products. These were then passed to
the central Estimating and Quotations Department which, in conjunction
with the Joinery Manager, calculated costs and prepared a written quotation,
which was faxed or posted to the customer. This first stage was normally
completed within two or three days, but on occasions could take a week or
more. On receipt of an order, the original sketches and estimating details
were passed back to the Joinery Manager, who roughly scheduled them into
his manufacturing plan, allocating them to individual craftsmen as each
became available. Most of the joiners were capable of making any product,
and enjoyed the wide variety of challenging work.
The Joinery Department appeared congested and somewhat untidy, but
everyone believed that this was acceptable and normal for job shops, since
there was no single flow route for materials. Whatever the design of the item
being made, it was normal for the joiner to select the required bulk timber
from the storage building across the yard. This roughly-sawn timber was
then prepared using a planer-thicknesser machine which gave it smooth,
parallel surfaces. After that, the joiners would use a variety of processes,
depending on product. The timber could be machined into different crosssectional shapes, cut into component lengths using a radial arm saw, joints
were formed by hand tools, or using a morticing machine, and so on. Finally,
the products would be glued and assembled with screws and nails, sanded
smooth by hand or by machine, and treated with preservatives, stains or
varnishes if required. All the large and more expensive floor-standing
machines were grouped together by type (for example, saws) or were single
pieces of equipment shared by all 10 joiners. Every joiner also owned a
complete set of hand tools which they guarded and cared for with pride.
Dean described what one might observe on a random visit to the Joinery
Department:
‘One or two long staircases partly assembled, and crossing several work
areas; large door frames on trestles being assembled; stacks of window

components for a large contract being prepared and jointed, and so on.
Offcuts and wood shavings are scattered around the work area, but are
periodically cleared when they get in the way or form a hazard. The joiners
try to fit in with each other over the use of machinery, so are often working
on several, part-finished items at once. Varnishing or staining has to be done
when it’s quiet, for example towards the end of the working day or at
weekends, or even outside, to avoid sawdust contamination. Long offcuts are
stacked around the workshop, to be used up on any future occasion when
these lengths or sections are required. However, it is often easier to take a
new length of timber for each job, so the offcuts do tend to build up over
time. Unfortunately, everything I have described is getting worse as we get
busier … our sales are increasing so the system is getting more congested.
The joiners are almost climbing over each other to complete their work.
Unfortunately, despite having more orders, the department has remained
stubbornly unprofitable!
’Whilst analysing in detail the lack of profit, we were horrified to find that,
for the majority of orders, the actual times booked by the joiners exceeded
the estimated times by up to 50 per cent. Sometimes this was clearly
attributable to the inexperience of newly employed joiners. Although fully
trained and qualified, they might lack the experience needed to complete a
complex job in the time an Estimator would expect; but there had been no
feedback of this to the individual. We then put one of these men on doors
only; having overcome his initial reluctance, he has become an enthusiastic
“door expert” and gets closely involved in quotations too, so now he always
does his work within the time estimates! However, the main time losses
were found to be the result of general delays caused by congestion,
interference, double-handling, and rework to rectify in-process damage.
Moreover, we found that a joiner walked an average of nearly 5 km a day,
usually carrying around heavy bits of wood.
‘When I did my operations management course on my MBA, the professor
described the application of cellular manufacturing and JIT. From what I can
remember, the idea seems to be to get better flow, reducing the times and
distances in the process, and thus achieving quicker throughput times. That
is just what we needed, but these concepts were explained in the context of
high-volume, repetitive production of bicycles, whereas all the products we

make are one-offs. However, although we do make a lot of different
staircases, they all use roughly the same process steps:
1 Cutting timber to width and length
2 Sanding
3 Machining
4 Tenoning
5 Manual assembly (glue and wedges)

‘We have a lot of unused factory floor space, so it would be relatively easy
to set up a self-contained staircase cell. There is a huge demand for
specially-made stairs in this region, but also a lot of competing small joinery
businesses with low overheads, which can beat us on price and lead-time. So
we go to a lot of trouble quoting for stairs, but only win about 20 per cent of
the business. If we could get the cell idea to work, we should be more
competitive on price and delivery, hence winning more orders. At least that
is the theory. I know we will need a lot more volume to justify establishing
the cell, so it’s really a case of whether to construct a cell in anticipation of
higher demand, or to try to win more business first. To do the latter, we
would have to reduce our selling prices and lead-times, and then allocate
more joiners to complete the higher volumes of orders until we had enough
work to set up the cell. I personally favour setting up the cell first so that we
can have a “capacity leads demand” strategy.’

Questions
1. To what extent could (or should) Dean expect to apply the philosophies
and techniques of JIT to the running of the staircase cell?
(2.5 MM)
2. What are likely to be the main categories of costs and benefits in
establishing the cell? Are there any non-financial benefits which should be
taken into account?
(2.5 MM)
3.How different would the cell work (job design) be to that in the main
Joinery Department?
(2.5 MM)
4. What risks are associated with Dean’s proposal?
(2.5 MM)

Note:
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You must include at least 5 references.
Format your references using APA style.
Each answer must not be less than 300 words

Answers

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