National Cranberry Cooperative Essay Example for Free

National Cranberry Cooperative Essay According to the data provided, there is 50 % of incoming berries which were wet harvested. In the absolute terms, this amounts to 750 bbls/h. The three drying machines can only handle 600 bbls/h altogether, meaning that 150 bbls of berries have to be stored in the bins each hour while waiting for the drying process. The second bottleneck is â€Å"located† at the separators. The three separating lines have the capacity to separate 1200 bbls/h, while there are 1350 bbls/h ready to be separated. Therefore, 150 bbls of dry berries have to be stores each hour. At the end of the day (7 PM) there are 2400 bbls wet berries waiting for drying and separating, while also 2400 bbls of dry berries still have to go through the separation process. Drying process of 2400 bbls of wet harvested berries takes 4 additional hours and is finished at 11 PM. Simultaneously the separation is in process (for the dry harvested berries). After the last 600 bbls of wet harvested berries are dried it takes additional half an hour to separate them for quality measures. Separation process is finished at 11. 30 PM. 4. When would the last truck unload and how long would it have waited? Due to the fact that the capacity of the bins is large enough for both, dry (4000 bbls) and wet (1200 bbls only wet + 2000 bbls wet dry) harvested berries to be stored before entering the production process, there is no waiting needed for the truck drivers. All the trucks are able to unload by 7PM. 5. Changes in order to improve performance (estimate the costs and benefits) Based on our analysis we propose three possible solutions that would resolve a problem of company’s bottlenecks.