Case: Donner Company

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Donner Company is a manufacturer of printed circuit boards. They need to address several issues in their supply chain operations to improve their service level because net income in the month of September has drastically decreased. Before September, growth was steadily increasing every month. They found that the major problems include unpredictable bottlenecks in manufacturing, lower than expected productivity and lower than expected quality and delivery. After addressing these major issues, I find that investing in more CNC’s and phasing manual drilling out of the manufacturing process can go a long way to improve the service level of the company.

BRIEF OVERVIEW The Donner
- How does Donner Company’s service level compare to their competitors?
- Would providing a higher service level be worth the cost?

KEY DECISIONS TO BE MADE
- Decide if the manufacturing process could be more efficiently to be modified
- Decide if employee training can be improved
- Decide how to improve upon the order processing system
- Decide which layout is most efficient for all the facilities
- Decide how to quantify any bottlenecks in the business process
- Identify and solve quality and delivery problems
- Decide on a service level to maintain

ALTERNATIVES AND EVALUATIONS OF ALTERNATIVES Donner Company would benefit from an increase service level. There are bottlenecks in each part off their manufacturing process, and drilling, electroplating and inspecting, testing and packing need to be addressed. How can Donner Company increase their service level? Donner Company must learn how to manage large orders effectively. Small orders do not give Donne Company problems; the big orders do. They must increase their safety stock of materials and possibly shift their reordering point to increase their service level to where it needs to be.
Research can improve the efficiency of the electroplating process. Modifying the process to eliminate walking times for employees could save fifteen percent of the time, or 19 hours. This change may or may not help reduce bottlenecks significantly.
Cutting down on