Czech Mate: Jake and Dans Marvelous Adventure Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Introduction

Precise Motor is a manufacturing company located in the Czech Republic. The president of the operation decided to run the operations on the principal of continuous improvements and increased productivity. The prime product of the company is (PSEM) Proven Special Electric Motors, whose process takes excessive time to produce. In this process, the officers are working to establish a unique system that will eliminate the wastage of time during the motor manufacturing process. To make the change happen, Jake and Dan are observing transportation of manufacturing parts as well as other equipment in operations.

Problem Statement

The company is trying to eliminate its inventory storage and management up 40% as well as planning to increase its production up to 35%. For this change, the company has established a system that will maintain the quality and will work on the principle of just in time technique. However, the company  has become unable to implement this change because of its operational staff. The staff is resistant to the procedural change; hence, works in the traditional ways of manufacturing PSEM, which is an electric vehicle. Now the company is thinking alternatives to make operational staff willing to accept change.

Process Analysis

As it has been mentioned above that the officers were working to reduce PSEM manufacturing time with the contraction and the elimination of all steps. Two officers, Carrier, and Kallish were conducting this analysis of continuous time observation of each move involved in the process. Starting with the assembling procedures at precise Motor, the vehicle has to pass through from five work units in order to get completed. Each of these work units contain only one worker who assembles the component and forward it to the next level. This level is another station, which will work on the received part that would also serve in the completion of a motor.

Presently, the company is involved in the comparison of two automobile manufacturing methods that are PSEM and cellular model. Each method presents efficient ways of assembling auto components in an organized way. However, the company is using Cellular model in some of its business units that work on the principle of movement of the automobile from one workstation to the next in order complete the product. While the rest of the operational staff are following PSEM motor manufacturing style in which one worker builds the entire motor.

The major issue faced by the workers at all workstations was either the excess time or the constraint of time. During the assembling time, each work unit has to maintain a similar speed of forwarding and receiving the assembled motor so that each and every workstation could perform their task efficiently. It has been noticed that the workers used to wait for the remaining part of the motor in order to join a particular part to it. This results in the disruption of the entire assembling procedure due to which the worker would remain futile and wait for the   next consignment to assemble. The drawback existed in PSEM is that the process requires the batch of carts to deliver assembling parts to the station. However, the cart is also taking more time to load because the accumulation of excessive inventory at the station due to which it takes a lot of time to search a relevant part to move in the cart.

Implementation of Time Management Process:

Set goals

The management is setting its vision to reduce time horizon for the auto component to reach the workstation in both PSEM and Cellular method of assembling. Apart from putting efforts on Managing time, the company would also locate inventory in an organized way which will also contribute in the time reduction method.

Formulated plans

Two officers were allocated to observe the outcomes of both manufacturing systems on a daily basis. The officers have sorted out that the just-in-time technique must be followed along with quality management. In order to build these plans into actions, the company has decided to implement a lean management system that creates a value for the end user by using their skills to eliminate waste material.

Set a Milestone

The President of the operational unit of Europe at Precise has decided to decrease the total inventory up to 40 percent from its current level. However, he is also aiming to increase the production efficiency up to 30 percent..........................

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Two MBA students participating in the week-long kaizen event at the factory in the Czech Republic should improve performance and reduce the gross inventory, despite the group work uncooperative. Lean manufacturing principles is analyzed in the context of the period of controlled processes.
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by Elliott N. Weiss, Robert Collier, Mike Kadish Source: Darden School of Business 14 pages. Publication Date: September 22, 2009. Prod. #: UV3571-PDF-ENG

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