Introduction
The EC Shirt Company has its reputation in the apparel industry for its high quality and
competitively priced men’s shirts. Due to a slight sales drop, the general manager decided to
expand the company's product line with custom sized shirts as they could bring 75% more price
as compared to off the-shelf- shirts. Even though customers were deterred due to the high price
and delayed delivery of custom made shirts, the manager decided to fix the issue with moderate
price and delivery within 10 working days.
Objective
ECSC’s current facility is able to manufacture 1600 off- the- shelf shirts per month. The manager
plans to produce 2000 custom sized shirts per month without hampering the production of the
standard sized shirts.
The general manager ordered a “low-ply” laser cutting machine for the custom sized shirts. He
asked two of his managers to design the operations in a way to maximize the profit from both
standard and custom sized shirts without a huge capital expenditure.
First Alternative Plan: The highlights of this plan are
● To process both standard and custom sized shirts together
● Reduce the batch size from 60 to 5 shirts
● 6 batches per worker
Second Alternative Plan: The highlights of this plan are
● To keep the production of custom sized and standard shirts separate.
● Shifting 1 worker from each department except the cutting part which will be handled by
a new worker.
● Moving 12 sewing machine and an iron machine to custom size shirt from standard shirt
production
● 60 shirts per batch
Current Production Process
Operation
Regular Shirts Labor Content
(minutes per shirts)
No. of
workers
Minutes Per
Shirts/Worker
1. Make collar
3,90
8
0.49
2. Make cuffs
2,00
4
0.50
0,65
2
0.33
4. Make front
2,50
6
0.42
5. Make back
1,70
4
0.43
0,66
2
0.33
1,65
4
0.41
1,55
4
0.39
0,65
2
0.33
1,80
4
0.45
11. Attach cuffs
1,55
4
0.39
12. Hem bottom
1,70
4
0.43
13. Inspect
1,50
4
0.38
14. Iron
1,95
4
0.49
1,75
4
0.44
3.Make sleeves
6. Join shoulders
7. Attach collar
8. Attach sleeves
9. Stitch down sleeves
10. Sew side seam
15 .Fold, package
From the table it is clear that cuff making is the slowest process and hence the cycle time of the
regular sized shirt making is equal to the time of cuff making= 0.5 min
Actual cycle time: It is the time required to make one shirt.
Total available time in a month (mins) = 20 days X 8 hours X 60 mins = 9600 mins
Total number of shirt produced in a month = 16000 shirts
Therefore, the actual cycle time would be= 9600 mins/16000 shirts = 0.6min/shirts
Manufacturing Lead time (days) is the time clear the WIP in the given production capacity
WIP Inventory (shirts) = 11760 shirts
Production capacity= 800 shirts/day
Manufacturing Lead time = 11760/800 = 14.7 days
Work in Progress Inventory: Inventory (shirts) held up at different stage of operations
Average WIP –196 batches with 60 shirts= 11760 shirt
Production capacity: Is the number of shirts produced in the ideal cycle time
Number of mins available in a day= 8 X 60 = 480 mins
Ideal cycle time= 0.5 mins/shirt
Therefore, the production capacity is = 480 mins/0.5 mins = 960 shirts
Capacity utilization: Is the how much of the total capacity utilized
Actual Production capacity = 800 shirts
Ideal production capacity= 960 Shirts
Capacity Utilization= 800/960 = 83.33%
Direct labor Content: Is the time taken by all workers to complete the job
Cutting time by 4 workers = 1 min/shirt
Assembly time = 25.51 mins/shirt
Total time = 26.51 mins/shirt