Goods and Service Design

The primary goods produced by the Chocolicious division are

chocolates and chips. The chocolates comes in different shapes and are
packed in different ways. The cooking of the chocolates is standardized.
There are recipes for each variety and each recipe is strictly followed.
According to the manager it is standardized to avoid high amount of
spoilage. The chocolates also come in different varieties like minted
chocolates, chocolates mixed with little alcohol, dark chocolates and etc.
Moreover, there is only one person who is tasked to cook the chocolate and
such person is specialized in her work. The chocolates are then poured in a
molder with different designs. These chocolates are then frozen in the
freezer for about 10-15 minutes. After which they are packed in different
packages. Each type of packaging contains different measurement of
chocolates. For example, chocolate kisses are measured by pieces, while
bars are measured in grams. The packaging is hand made. The chocolates
are packed manually. The packaging comes in different designs. There are
those chocolates that are packed in a way that it is suitable to be given as a
gift, like chocolate bouquets, gift packaging design and so on. There are also
those packages which are simple. The chocolates that are for retail are
packed in a simple manner to enable mass production. The packaging is
usually in the form of plastic containers and boxes. Chocolicious division also
caters special orders like chocolates with specifications as to the percentage
of its darkness and chocolates that are personally designed as to shape and
packaging. Chocolicious also produces dark unsweetened chocolates
commonly known as tableya. The tableya is made up of fermented beans.
The tableya produced must have a good aroma and smooth texture.
Although named Chocolicious, the division also produces chips, which
in actual, also generates a big chunk of the sales of the division. There are
three varieties of chips that Chocolicious produce, they are: banana, taro &
camote. These chips also come in different flavors like barbeque, sweet and
sour, cheese and so on. These chips are batch produced so basically there is
a high amount of standardization involved in producing these chips. The taro
& camote are chipped using a machine while the banana is chipped using
manual labor. The taro, camote and banana are chipped thick enough to
produce a crispy but tasty chip. The chipped taro, camote and banana are
then fried according to the recipe that the Chocolicious had established. The
finished products have different qualities, for example, the banana chips
must be crisp and must be fried until its color turns gold. While the camote
and taro must be crisp and must not look over fried. These chips are then

packed manually. Each type of chip has its own type of plastic container and
each type of plastic container has different sizes.
The label that is used by the Chocolicious division is printed out by
third parties outside the company. The design of the labels are made by a
professional editor which is then printed in a sticker to be placed in the
containers. The labels includes date of manufacturing, expiration date,
several agencies which helped the Chocolicious division, general ingredients,
flavors and the name of the product.
Part III
The group deliberated the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats that are present in each specific areas of operations. Through
thorough analysis and debate the group concluded that the areas of Layout
Design, Strategic Capacity, and Supply Chain Management are the areas
which needed significant improvements.
Layout Design:
According to the group, the layout of the workplace for manufacturing
chocolates is cramped. The space is very small in relevance to the number of
people working in it. The group is concerned that the small workplace might
cause injuries to the workers and damages to the products that they
produce. Also, the space of the workplace is not efficiently utilized since
there are unnecessary things that are placed there. If this unnecessary
things are removed then workspace would be much wider and more work
friendly. Moreover, the drainage system of the workplace for manufacturing
chips is not properly made. The canal is not covered, which might cause
someone slipping into it. This may also affect the cleanliness of the area
which the chips are manufactured.
Strategic Capacity:
Based on the opinions and observations of the group, there are parts in
the operations of the Chocolicious that have bottlenecks. These bottlenecks
causes overtime which results to higher labor cost. The group pointed out
that having this bottlenecks causes slack in production. Even though the
division is able to meet its demand, the way they achieve it is costly and
tiring, in the part of the workers. For example, in manufacturing chips there
is only one stove available. So basically there is a bottleneck here when the
chipped banana, taro and camote are set to be fried because of the lack of
equipment. Due to this the volume of chips that can be fried is only limited

to the capacity of the only stove. Thus it would take longer time for the
workers to meet the specific demand or order, resulting to overtime and
exhausted workers. By fixing this bottleneck the division would not just save
on labor cost but also will be able to increase its capacity and efficiency.
Supply Chain Management:
The concern of the group in this area is about the availability of the
suppliers, consistency of the quality of the raw materials, and transportation
cost incurred by the division in acquiring the raw materials. Based on the
opinion of the group, having a permanent supplier must be a priority for
Chocolicious because if there will be no permanent supplier then there might
come a time that no raw materials will be available for production especially
since the division is applying the Just in time inventory management system.
Even though there are suppliers which had supplied the division of raw
materials for a long time already, having no contractual agreement between
suppliers might still cause losses due to sudden backing out of a specific
supplier. Also, since there are no contractual suppliers, consistency of quality
might become an issue sooner or later. Since there is no contractual
suppliers, the division would have a hard time going against their current
suppliers in cases when the raw materials acquired are not of good quality.
Finally, if there will be contractual agreements with suppliers, the division
might be able to have schemes for lessening the transportation cost.
The group had come up with these areas by considering different
factors such as the current demand, manpower available and the current
status of the division in terms of budget. The group then agreed that if ever
that this areas are improved then the division would be able to improve its
whole operations, would be able to meet higher amount of demand and
would be able to compete in a higher level of market.