Donner Case

Currently, Donner is facing many bottlenecks with their operation and production processes. To name the most important ones;

a. Labor utilization of their employees

b. Poor product quality

c. Delivery discrepancies

Donner, once a producer for contract markets, is trying to diversify itself in captive markets. However, this is becoming an increasing problem since they are not implementing a clear operating strategy for how to accommodate different size orders and delivery times. These non-clear operating strategies are directly affecting the quality of their products as well as the delivery times. The employees are constantly interrupted and sometimes they are even idle. This is directly impacting the production process. At first the employees have to wait for the raw material to be delivered from the vendors once the order is in. This takes between 2-4 days or longer in some cases. Sometimes, when the customers change their specifications, the workers have to stop working on a certain project and await instructions from the management. In many other cases, the workers would leave a certain process they were initially assigned to work on, in order to work in a different process. This only caused more and more issues resulting in a delay of production. Furthermore, the management was having trouble deciding whether to use manual drilling and punch presses or CNC drilling. From my understanding the management was having trouble analyzing which method would benefit them best in the long run. The promised delivery times are not being met, 8 days late in September. In addition, the quality of the products has decreased causing an increase in the product return rate, a total of 7% in September.