Honda Case

Retsab The statements seem to be inconsistent. First of all, the manager says that her inventory turns three times a year. So logically, we can think that the inventory turns every four months. But then she said that everything bought by the company leaves within six weeks. So this information seems to be contradictory, unless Retsab stop its activity two months and a half each four months. That could mean that the company is closed 7,5 months a year which bring us to think company’s activities might be seasonal or on demand waiting to have several orders before starting again the activity. So far it’s the only conclusion we found to make this statement consistent. Mini case : Honda _Process 2 :_ _Process 3 :_ _Process 4 :_ _Process 5 :_ In the case of Hondas 1100cc motorcycle, the total production time for the first bike takes 37 minutes. But considering that there are two persons in charge of assembling the seats, the flow-time is reduced to 34 from the second bike production on. Because for some other processes there is only one employee. Actually, assembling the seats is the main process of the critical path, as we can see on the following scheme: {draw:frame} In order to reduce the theoretical flow-time of the ACE process, Honda should invest in a new welder machine, and reorganise the employees. We think that there are too many final assemblers, so we propose to train one final assembler to use the new welder machine, and one other to complete the seat assembling team. Here is our explanation: From the second bike on, Honda is able to produce one bike in 34 minutes: 4 minutes preparing the pieces and 30 minutes to assemble the pieces. This means that every 4 minutes, a new assembler can start his job, so they need 8 assemblers (30:4=7,5) until the first can restart an assembling process. So the 9th and 10th final assemblers are not necessary. The critical path diagram shows that assembling the