Please ready instructions carefully, case studies material included.
Final Paper
The final assignment for the course is a Final Paper on two cases. The Final Paper should demonstrate an understanding of the reading as well as the implications of new knowledge. The eight- to ten-page paper should integrate readings and course discussions into work and life experiences. It may include an explanation and examples from previous experiences as well as implications for future applications.
Read the case study at the end of Chapter 15 and the case study at the end of Chapter 16, and thoroughly answer all the following questions. Supplement your answers with scholarly research using the Ashford Online Library. Each case study should be addressed in four to five pages, resulting in a combined Final Paper of eight to ten pages.
Chapter 15 Case Study: The Realco Breadmaster
• Develop a master production schedule for the breadmaker. What do the projected ending inventory and available-to-promise numbers look like? Has Realco “overpromised”? In your view, should Realco update either the forecast or the production numbers?
• Comment on Jack’s approach to order promising. What are the advantages? The disadvantages? How would formal master scheduling improve this process? What organizational changes would be required?
• Following up on Question 2, which do you think is worse, refusing a customer’s order upfront because you don’t have the units available or accepting the order and then failing to deliver? What are the implications for master scheduling?
• Suppose Realco produces 20,000 breadmakers every week, rather than 40,000 every other week. According to the master schedule record, what impact would this have on average inventory levels?
Chapter 16 Case Study: A Bumpy Road for Toyota
• Is Toyota’s focus on quality consistent with the Lean philosophy? Can a firm actually follow the Lean philosophy without having a strong quality focus? Explain.
• Who are the “coordinators” referred to in the article? What role have they played in educating Toyota’s workforce in promoting the TPS (Toyota Production System) philosophy? Why are they so hard to replicate?
• According to Hajime Oba, what is wrong with Detroit’s approach to Lean? Based on your understanding of American auto manufacturers, do you agree or disagree?
• There is an old saying “Haste makes Waste.” How does this apply to what is happening in the Georgetown plant? What is Toyota doing about it?
The Final Paper:
• Must be eight to ten double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
o Title of paper
o Student’s name
o Course name and number
o Instructor’s name
o Date submitted
• Must begin with an introductory paragraph that has a succinct thesis statement.
• Must address the topic of the paper with critical thought.
• Must end with a conclusion that reaffirms your thesis.
• Must use at least four scholarly sources, 
• Must document all sources in APA style 
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style 
Chapter 15 Case Study: The Realco Breadmaster
Case Study Design for Supply Chain Programs
Design for Supply Chain (DfSC) is a systematic method of ensuring the best fit between the design of a product throughout its lifetime and its supply chain members’ resources and capabilities. Even something as simple as flattening the tops of soda cans, as beverage makers did in the 1950s, can revolutionize product development, transform transportation and inventory processes, and generate huge cost savings and increased customer satisfaction. Hewlett-Packard (HP) has been in the forefront of adopting DfSC principles, and IBM is another staunch proponent.
IBM developed a short list of DfSC principles that have helped it create products that are both competitive and supply-chain-efficient throughout their life cycles. Briefly stated, these principles are:
1. Integrate products parts and components as much as possible to reduce product assembly time.
2. Use industry-standard parts whenever possible to lower costs and simplify sourcing efforts.
3. Reduce lead times on critical components to avoid paying premium shipping fees on rush orders.
4. Design products for supply-chain friendliness throughout their life cycle, planning for and minimizing the cost and disruption of design and technology changes as products mature.
5. Build supply chains based on the company’s strategic plan, not around the idiosyncratic requirements of specific products.
6. Use common components and modular design, thereby reducing product variability.
7. Minimize inventory costs and reduce the risk of obsolescence by building to order from common components and subassemblies, rather than building to stock.
8. Design products to give customers flexibility when ordering while keeping costs in line.
9. Use high quality parts and parts which can be quickly diagnosed to minimize warranty costs and improve after sales service.
HP similarly uses DfSC to consider the impact of its design decisions over product lifetimes, from pre-launch through production to end of life cycle, in all its business units and regions. The DfSC strategy—essentially looking back in order to see ahead—helps improve HP’s relationships with suppliers, manufacturers, logistics service firms, retailers, and consumers.
To use DfSC, which it adopted in the early 1990s, HP first asks four questions about its products:
1. What makes the product a good fit for a particular supply chain?
2. Which design decisions produce that result? For example, does the product have unique parts?
3. When and why are design decisions being made, and who is making them?
4. How can the company deliver great products at higher profit margins?
Since adopting DfSC and successfully propagating its use throughout the company, HP has been able to introduce more new products faster and at lower cost. It has increased its revenues and kept customers happy. At the same time, the company has found ways to improve its inventory efficiency without offsetting risks onto its suppliers (which would damage its supply-chain relationships) or reducing the quality of product inputs (which would increase the cost of honoring product warranties as well as damaging customer relationships).
HP’s six DfSC techniques are:
1. Variety control. Having fewer SKUs allowed the company to reduce inventory 42% and increase product availability in its PC division.
2. Logistics enhancement. Making an InkJet printer 45% smaller saved more than $1 per unit in logistics costs.
3. Commonality and reuse. While unique parts make products distinctive, they increase inventory costs and, often, time to market.
4. Postponement. Designing products to remain generic as long as possible during the production process, until it’s known how the end user wants to customize them, saves costs.
5. Tax and duty reduction. These costs can be higher or lower based on the country of origin.
6. Take-back facilitation. Design and packaging changes can reduce both manufacturing and environmental costs.
HP estimates that DfSC techniques have saved it about $200 million per year.
Questions 
1. What is the relationship between design for manufacturability (DFM) and design for supply chain (DfSC)?
2. In the chapter, we discussed parts standardization and modular architecture. How do these two approaches support DfSC?
3. You hear someone say, “DfSC sounds fine in theory, but I think it will have two negative effects. First, it will slow down the product development process because now all the areas that make up supply chain management—procurement, manufacturing, and logistics—will need to be involved. Second, it gives too much power to the supply chain functions. After all, if supply chain managers think something is too difficult to ship or too expensive to make, they may say no.” What do you think? Are these legitimate concerns? How should operations managers address them?
Handfield, Cecil B. Bozarth and Robert B. Introduction to Operations and Supply Chain Management, 4th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions, 8/29/2016. VitalBook file.
Chapter 16 Case Study: A Bumpy Road for Toyota
Case Study Supply-Chain Challenges in Post-Earthquake Japan
Japanese automakers have long been known for the quality of their products, and especially for the efficiency of their streamlined manufacturing and supply processes. Thus, few people could have predicted how severely the destructive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011 would disrupt the country’s entire auto industry. Matters were further complicated by the damage the quake and floodwaters caused to one of Japan’s nuclear power plants, interrupting power supplies around the country and creating a dangerous radiation zone for miles around the plant.
Following the quake and ensuing floods, most automotive factories in Japan were closed for at least several weeks, bringing to a halt about 13% of worldwide auto production. Toyota, Honda, and Mazda shut down many of their parts and manufacturing plants in Japan, and Toyota also announced plans to suspend production in at least one North American plant because of parts shortages. The company said it would make plant improvements and run training programs in its other U.S. facilities while the assembly lines were idle or run operations on a part-time basis to conserve its parts inventory. Honda, Nissan, and Subaru also reduced their North American output as they anticipated and tried to deal with expected parts shortages.
Since one of the guiding principles of Lean production is to keep parts inventories as low as possible, it wasn’t long before these shortages occurred. “The supply chain in the automotive industry is so fragile,” said one legal advisor to the global auto industry. “It’s based on just-in-time principles, where you don’t have a lot of inventories built up, so you leave yourself without much margin for error when a supply interruption happens.”
Industry observers predicted that about half of Japan’s auto capacity would remain closed for at least eight weeks after the disaster, which would eventually put about one-third of worldwide production in jeopardy, as the effects of parts shortages made themselves increasingly felt in manufacturing facilities far from Japan. One auto industry research firm predicted that about five million cars that the industry had expected to sell in 2011 would never be made.
By spring and summer 2011, in fact, U.S. auto dealers were reporting what one called “a lot of emptiness” in their showrooms. Many logged dwindling sales as supplies fell to as little as one-fifth their normal levels, and popular cars such as the Honda Civic and Accord went out of stock. Without new cars to sell, even trade-in sales were slowing. Honda posted a 27% decline in sales for August 2011, and Toyota anticipated a dramatic 31% profit decline for the year. Although the Japanese auto industry worked hard to quickly return to full capacity, output was still not fully restored some six months after the disaster. The disaster’s long-lasting ripple effects thus motivated industry executives to consider some changes in their vaunted manufacturing and supply operations. Traditionally, Toyota had used a single source for many parts that were common to more than one of its car models. Although the company locally sources about 85% to 90% of parts and materials needed for its North American manufacturing operations, a strategy that should make it less vulnerable to supply interruptions in Japan, it actually builds a larger proportion of its vehicles in Japan than do the other automakers, so the 2011 disaster was a serious blow.
In response to these problems, Toyota’s management began work to “foolproof” the supply chain so that it could recover from major interruptions in as little as two weeks. The plan had three parts. First, Toyota would increase standardization of auto parts so all Japanese carmakers could share the supply. These parts would be made in several locations to ensure uninterrupted supply. Next, the company asked its upstream suppliers of highly specialized parts, or parts that are sourced from only one location, to hold larger inventories than they had been carrying, as and opened up new options for manufacturing such parts to reduce its dependence on single sources. Finally, and perhaps most ambitiously, Toyota took steps to make each of its global regions independent of the others in terms of parts supply, so supply chain disruptions in one area will not spill over into the operations of any other areas.
Questions 
1. What are some of the advantages of the supply chain used in the Japanese auto industry before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami? What were some of its disadvantages?
2. Is Toyota’s plan for a “foolproof” supply chain consistent with the Lean production philosophy? Explain.
3. Can you think of any additional ways Toyota (and its competitors in the Japanese auto industry) can improve upon the company’s plan to create a “foolproof” supply chain?
4. What impact do you think Toyota’s plan will have on the way it handles relationship management in its supply chain?
Handfield, Cecil B. Bozarth and Robert B. Introduction to Operations and Supply Chain Management, 4th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions, 8/29/2016. VitalBook file.