As the company examines various methods to assess its performance and design processes, it is looking for an analysis of the existing workflow production process and the factors that most directly impact such measurements. As a review, the most common metrics for production processes are as follows:
- Quality: the number of defects associated with a given product
- Cost: material and labor cost
- Timeliness: how quickly products are manufactured and delivered
- Flexibility: the degree to which the production process can be adapted to produce other products or specific products more quickly
- Productivity: a ratio of outputs divided by inputs
- Efficiency: a ratio of actual outputs divided by standard (or expected) outputs, multiplied by 100% to give a total efficiency percentage
- Cycle time: the total time it takes to complete a production process
- Theory of Constraints and Queuing Theory
Using course materials and other research, complete the following:
- Explain how each measure can be applied to the company's production planning process. Can the company use each one? How?
- Rank the criteria listed above in order of importance to the company's production planning strategy detailing your rationale for such a ranking.
- Identify other measures that might apply to the company and explain them.