OTM 300 Lecture 8: Operations Management (2/11)

• School: UW-Madison
• Department: Operations and Technology Management
• Course: OTM 300
• Professor: Allison Briggs

Document Summary

There is no need to be working at 100% Total time required: number of units demanded x total time. 60 x # of work hours x number of steps. When you need demand, divide total time by bottleneck. Reduce the time of the bottleneck to increase efficiency by adding time to the step before. Flow rates, flow times, and inventories are treated as averages in process flow analysis. In reality, these values occur in a range. Delays affect other following activities as they have to wait. Speeding up activities may not benefit other activities as they may not be able to catch up. Can mitigate the effect of variability, but raise wip (inventory number of products in process boundaries") With variability being so hard to eliminate, you will always find buffers in use. Focuses on continual improvements in product and service quality by reducing uncertainty and variability in design, manufacturing, and service process, driven by the leadership of top management.