Assignment Objectives:
Analyze processes and workflow of quality management, JIT and lean manufacturing, inventory management, and supply chain management and the use of enterprise resource, manufacturing and production operations systems and platforms.
Assignment Description:
ERP systems are complicated, and the executive has asked that you, the warehouse manager, to join the decision-making team for selecting the appropriate software. Who else from the company should be on the selection team? Please explain your answer.
***For this assignment requires that you assume the role of the warehouse manager in supporting the team’s selection of an appropriate Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) program. Here you will need to incorporate the knowledge of what an ERP system encompasses and how involvement by all necessary departments across the business is important in its overall success.
Scenario:
Smitheford Pharmaceuticals
Smitheford Pharmaceuticals was founded by a former officer in the Civil War, General Robert Smitheford, in 1878. He moved his family to Colorado Springs to aid in his wife’s tuberculosis condition. At the time, it was believed that the sunshine and high altitude had curative effects.
The company quickly grew and expanded. To improve the economies of several growing towns in Colorado, General Smitheford built additional manufacturing facilities in Pueblo, Grand Junction, Fort Collins, and Durango, Colorado.
Smitheford was an excellent leader, as demonstrated by his rapid rise in the Union Army. He used management quantitative and qualitative and was an early follower of Frederick Taylor on methods improvement and employee satisfaction. The company has since adopted total quality management (TQM) philosophies but has done a poor job of implementing these principles in manufacturing.
By the 1950s, Smitheford Pharmaceuticals grew to become the 6th-largest pharmaceutical firm in the United States. Expansion in manufacturing occurred in the 1970s and 1980s with operations in Canada, Puerto Rico, France, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil.
Many challenges are facing the industry today. NAFTA impacted some advantages that Canadian manufacturing might have had. Stricter FDA guidelines have made transportation of partially manufactured products more complicated; drug interactions, especially for the elderly, can seriously affect whether or not to release a new product, and manufacturing equipment has become more sophisticated, and with the advanced technology comes increase fixed costs.
You are a midlevel manager of production operations at Smitheford. You will need to look at several methods to improve efficiency and effectiveness for its area of responsibility. You will use quantitative and qualitative methods to make recommendations for the improvements.
