Name: Go Tze Fong (a107456) Date: 1 April 2009 Lecturer:

Name: Go Tze Fong (A107456) Date: 1 April 2009 Lecturer: Dr. Mohd Nizam Bin Ab Rahman Assignment Individual 3 KP4473

1.

What manufacturing processes are used by WHP to make and package its product? The steps of WHP to produce tablet are as below: i.

The production of “mother tincture”, held in the potency room.

ii.

After receive an invoice, a member of the dispensary staff checks the product formula

iii. The standard base tablets are purchased as a raw material iv. The actual ingredient is added on the packing line (Collection of ingredients) v.

The tablets are then loaded into a feed drum

vi. And then tablets are either routed through to blister pack or bottle machines depending upon the packing requirements

The steps of WHP to produce cream and ointment are as below: i.

Make a standard cream and ointment base which the active ingredient is added

ii.

Then transfer to the feed hopper

iii. Linked to the tube-filling machine iv. Once filled, the tube are sent on pallets to the cream-packing bay 6 tubes are placed into a box before they are shrinking wrapped.

Potency room

Dispensary 5000mm

v.

Tincture Preparation

Quality control Laboratory

Low volume product inventory

Feed hopper

Flow of produce tablet

Flow of produce creamand ointment

Tube Filling Machine

Shrink wrapper machine Blisters and bottlefilling machine

Packing

Creampacking bay

Preparation and mixing area

Figure 1: Process Layout of WHP

1.

Assess the capacity issues within the processes used. Are John Mason’s concerns about weekly sales forecasts substantiated?

Production strategies applied by WHP: According to the article, the products for which there is regular demand are kept in stock. John Mason implements the weekly forecast, so have the products in stock to meet delivery requirements. However, the products are made on receipt of an order with low demand, (Doctors, pharmacists, and retail outlets specializing in homeopathic medicines frequently place orders for low demand products) are made up in the dispensary and then the orders are picked and packed which similar to the small and medium volume orders. As a short say, WHP is execute mass production for the large and regular demand product and applying make-toorder for the small and medium volume orders. Inventory strategies applied by WHP: Most product of WHP are sold from stock, the exceptions are the special orders. The inventory for some low volume demand product is kept at the area in dispensary, while the low demand products is kept in the finished goods warehouse. Larger volume orders go to the finished goods warehouse where they are picked and packed before being delivery by same private carrier service referred to earlier. Resource flexibility of WHP: There is a statement in the article which is both operators can undertake either job on the cream-filling line and typically work half day on each task. And this is

the key to keep the filling machine fully loaded with empty tubes. Outputs of this statement are to achieve reliable customer service, prevent from the bottlenecks, and the optimize using of the machine. However, the WHP requires the high skillful operator. Therefore, WHP should send his operators to more training.

2.

Advise the company on what steps, if any, it should take. Recommendations: i.

More understanding to the customer’s need WHP should search the information deeply so that WHP can more understanding to the customer’s need. The suggesting searching tools are: questionnaires, face-to-face interview with customer, benchmark and so on. Thus, WHP can keep improving their competitive capability.

ii.

Facility layout Refer to the figure 1. We can notice that the layout applied by WHP is not optimizing using the places of land and the process flows are not very smooth. So, rearrangement of the facility layout is recommended to improve the manufacturing lead time and create a smoother process flow.

iii. Material handling Conveyer can be used as the transfer tool. So the in-process product can be transferred smoothly and reduce the cycle time

iv. Flexible of equipment. Process engineer should select the flexible and general purpose equipment for low volume demand product so that the cost can be reduced. v.

Training and education WHP should provide the training courses for its operation so that can generate high quality and high skill workers.