(Use the information provided in the case study to answer these questions.
Lynne had recently attended a training course and had learned all about MRP. As the shared owner of a manufacturing company, the course had given Lynne new hopes for the organisation’s future.
The organisation made dog treats and was fairly unique in its approach. Lynne’s husband was a butcher and the idea came from Lynne thinking about making pet treats from the offcuts of meat and offal from her husband’s butchery store.
The prototypes were a success and Lynne soon had a product that she could bag up and sell at a more competitive price than the market leaders.
The problem she had was that the amount of meat coming into her husband’s business was never certain, so she was unable to plan or know when she could next make the dog treats.
The process to make the treats was straightforward, albeit time consuming. It involved cutting the waste product into sized pieces and placing them in a drying machine to remove all the moisture. This made the products hard and chewy – ideal for dogs. The issue Lynne had with this was that she had never really taken the time to work out how long the drier needed to be on for. Regardless of whether she went back to the drier after it had been on for four hours during the day or after 12 hours, if the machine was on overnight, the results appeared to be the same. She questioned if she was wasting money running the machine for the extra eight hours.
The drying machine took a long time to warm up before it could be used so Lynne tended to spend quite a lot of time waiting until it was ready for the meat to be put in.
Recently a large order came in from a new client, Caroline, who wanted to stock the products in her dog friendly café, unfortunately Lynne was not able to meet the demand due to not having enough packaging. She always tried to keep her stock costs as low as possible and the lead time of the packaging was such that even if she managed to get the products made she would not be able to get them out of the premises in time to meet Caroline’s order. Lynne thought, just in case she received a large order, it might help if she increased the stock of packaging in her store. But how much should she hold? Thankfully, Caroline has been understanding and appreciated that the business was still evolving. She asked Lynne how they could work together to try and ensure that if Caroline needed a product, Lynne could supply against that demand.
