Running head: CASE STUDY- BAYONNE PACKAGING 1

CASE STUDY- BAYONNE PACKAGING 2

Analysis of the Bayonne Packaging Case

1) Define the operational strategy of Bayonne packaging’s operation. You will need to

reflect on the current priority as appeared in the company

President Neil Rand of Bayonne Inc, indicates few of the concerns that the company is

currently facing; customer complaining about the quality (due to poor functioning of glue

and fold) and more than often late delivery on time (Shapiro, R. D., & Morrison, P. E.,

2012, page 5). This lack in quality and speed has negatively contributed to the volume of

sale and forced the company to incur the loss in 2011 for the first time since inception.

Moreover, other department managers have also voiced few of the interrelated

operational shortcoming that directly relate to the performance measures namely;

dependability, quality and speed.

Based on the urgencies provided by the operational managers of different departments of

Bayonne Packaging, we have determined the operational strategy of the company to be as

follows (priority based key performance objectives in descending order)

1) Dependability

2) Quality

3) Speed

4) Cost

Q 2: What is/are the types of process and layout of the Bayonne Packaging’s

operation? Do you think they are aligned with the company’s operations strategy? Explain

According to the QC manager Fran Schuler and shop manager Sean Quinn, the process

for Bayonne Packaging starts with Composing followed by Sheeting then followed by Printing

followed by Die-Cutting and finally Finishing (Shapiro & Morrison, Page 4). The manufacturing
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process type used by Bayonne Packaging is Batch Process and the layout types used are

Functional layout as well as Cell layout for manufacturing the final product. The above process

and layout is well aligned with the company’s operation strategies as there are specific roles for

each process. Each job is assigned with a specific work order jacket which provides information

of that batch. As per Mr. Gomes, the low volume jobs are put in Staudes machine and the high

volume in Queens machine (Shapiro & Morrison, Page 5). According to the company’s financial

data, the company has been growing over the period of time with the help of this process. Only

the financial year 2011, especially the month of October, showed losses (Shapiro & Morrison,

Page 9).

Q 3. Planning and control requires managing both demand and supply. A number of

planning and control activities were discussed in the course. In this question, you are asked

to discuss specific planning and control activities using proper evidence from the case as

follow:

a. Bayonne used more than one sequencing technique; what were the sequencing

techniques adopted by Bayonne Packaging’s operation? Discuss at least one implication of

the way the company used to sequence orders throughout its operation.

According to Quinn, orders were "ganged" when they were very identical in some system

settings so that multiple orders could be placed sequentially after a single configuration. For die-

cutting, if several orders had the same thickness of paper, blank shape including crease lines,

they might usually all use the same die and work on a single setup (as cited in Shapiro, R. D., &

Morrison, P. E., 2012, p. 4.). The computerized scheduling system created a schedule twice a

week, but this plan was not implemented because it had a lot of problems. Either the timetable

included orders that were never booked in the system or orders that were finished and transferred
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for further delivery. Often, it was challenging to keep the machine running between speeding

orders and ganging orders. The plan was, therefore, not followed by the operations department

(Shapiro, R. D., & Morrison, P. E., 2012, p. 5.).

3b) There are two scheduling philosophies: backward forward scheduling. What was the

scheduling philosophies adopted by Bayonne? Was it aligned the sequence technique used?

According to Jim Worthen, plant scheduler, a computer usually recalculates the hours of

machine capacity available in each work centers and print a new schedule in a twice a week. It

then adds up the standard setup and run hours for each order release and filled the machine

capacity hours by scheduling orders by priority (Shapiro, R. D., & Morrison, P.E., 2012, page

6.). This means computer-system is taking past references of data to recalculate the machine

capacity before fixing the scheduling. This backward scheduling lacks the idea of considering the

current circumstances of the operations and might have led to the emergence of the issues the

company is currently facing.

Clearly, from the above observation, it can be concluded that Bayonne Packaging has adopted

the philosophy of backward scheduling.

This backward scheduling approach does not align with the sequence technique since the system

refrain from considering the practical effect of an informal system of scheduling of orders and

therefore it is a pre-requisite for a company to fix the data first before getting adherence to the

scheduling process for the better results.

Q3 C: There are two main philosophies of planning and control: push and pull

planning and control. What was the philosophy of planning and control adopted by

Bayonne? Discuss at least one advantage and one disadvantage of the planning and control

philosophy adopted by Bayonne.

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At Bayonne, the company uses the Push philosophy in the process planning and control.

This is evident as Quinn explains the process of Bobst die cutting, where he gangs the order with

where same die is required. Here the succeeding process is not considered during mixing the

gang orders. Usually the orders are kept on waiting for more input material yet to come for the

gang. This was done because the change over time taken for each Bobst die takes around three to

four hours. This according to Quinn, creates delay in completing the single job (Shapiro &

Morrison, Page 4). The advantage of this philosophy is that it can saves time which goes in

replacing at every next order. But this philosophy also creates inventory for the product that

would not be scheduled for the shipment and would delay the current order to be delivered as the

die is not yet replaced.

Q 3 d: Do you think that planning and control activities adopted by Bayonne were aligned

with Bayonne’s current operations strategy? Discuss

The process used for manufacturing the final products demands pull-based philosophy as

each process has its dependability on its preceding process. Looking at the implementation of the

process layout, again, this philosophy of pull does not align with the company’s operation

strategies. According to Schuler, the work order jacket been prepared at the start of the process,

which has detailed information related to the job. This work order jacket contains job

information, routing, standard setup, run time, any individual instruction and ship-to information.

The process is evidence of having a pull philosophy in planning and controlling activity (Shapiro

& Morrison, Page 3). But since there were partial orders delivered and even mixing of gangs

were done, the overall delivery schedule got delayed and made things worse for the sales team.

There was method expediting jobs that created more trouble by interrupting the ongoing process
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leading to delay in all the other activities. These interruptions created inefficiency in the existing

process.
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References

Roy d, Shapiro. Paul e, Morrison. (2012). Bayonne packaging (case no. 4420, p.13). Retrieved

from

https://moodle.royalroads.ca/moodle/pluginfile.php/540757/mod_page/content/12/MGM

T%20569-B%202019%20Nov%20-%20Bayonne%20Packaging.pdf
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4. What is current capacity utilization in the work centers (excluding Finishing where

capacity is variable)?1

A B C D E F G
Machines Total Number Actual Standard Capacity Number of
Hours of Machine Machine Utilization Per working
Per Machine Hours(D=A*C) Hours(E=C*G) Work hours in
Machine s Center(F=D/E*100 October
)
Composition 255 1 255 347 73.49 347
Jagenburg 279 1 279 347 80.40
Heidelberg 348 2 696 694 100.29 Bottleneck of
Press Bayonne
Bobst Die-Cut 272 2 544 694 78.39
Int. Royal- 156 3 468 1041 44.96
Queen
Int. Staude 179 4 716 1388 51.59
Int. 3A 145 2 290 694 41.79
(Shapiro, R. D., & Morrison, P. E., 2012, p. 10)

Therefore, based on the available data, the capacity utilization chart indicated that

Heidelberg press printing is a bottleneck in the process because it has a capacity utilization rate

Q 5: What should John Milliken recommend to Dave Rand? Discuss at least three

recommendations. Please make sure to relate your recommendations to the analysis of the

case and Bayonne’s performance problems discussed in the previous questions.

There can be three broad approaches like Short term, Medium-term, and long term to

increase its efficiency. The short term recommendation would be to maintain machinery daily to

improve the quality of the output. Keep a regular meeting to prioritize the orders, check on the

rush orders and capacity utilization. The medium-term recommendations would be to have clear
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work order jacket for each department, focusing on the bottlenecks with extra hours of shifts

when needed and manage the variability of demand by introducing price reduction for bulk

orders. The long term recommendation would be to invest more in the latest equipment with high

speed and the most important of all is to introduce a computerized Enterprise Resource Planning

system to have a reliable flow of information among the processes. These recommendations

would help the company to create a more professional work environment thereby having a

smooth flow of process output.