PPC Session 1

Rajiv Misra, XLRI

NAME: Shrey Bhala ROLL NO19049

Review of the FILM

1.0 What do you think is the message for Operations Managers in the following
scenes of the Movie?

1.1 Airport Scene

The productivity can be said to have enhanced when the profits are higher. 3 metrics
required to check productivity are – i) operating expenses, ii) inventory levels and iii)
throughput (Price – RM costs).
It is important to use the right measurements – for eg. ‘efficiency’ is not a good metric
monitor plant’s productivity. In fact, because of increased efficiencies the machines were
manufacturing more parts hence the inventory levels were increasing.
1.2 Restaurant Scene
There were many backorders because the plant was not able to fulfill the demand even
when the production was maxed out. This was happening because bottleneck was not
identified. “A minute saved at the bottleneck is the minute saved for the entire plant”.
The machines were more efficient however, the overall production pace was still slow
because efficiencies were seen in isolation. Efficiency of entire plant should be increased
which can be done by identifying bottleneck and subordinating all the other machines to
that bottleneck thereby leading to increased capacity.
1.3 The interactions with the Boss (Peach)
Interactions with the boss tells us the sole goal of the plant is to make money and any
activity which supports this goal would be encouraged. Always keep this goal in mind
and work towards achieving it. Sometimes this would require reaching unrealistic targets
– hence, working smarter not harder (eg. making plant profitable in just 3 months).
2.0 Where did you see the following steps in practice in the film

IDENTIFY
The bottleneck identification –
When the machine NCX10 was identified as the bottleneck
When the market demand was identified as the bottleneck
EXPLOIT
NCX10 was running all the 3 shifts. Also, in a scene the machine was sitting idle
because the operators were busy fixing another machine. In that scene, Alex clearly
states that the machine should not sit idle and should be worked as much as possible.
SUBORDINATE
In a scene when Alex finds out that there are machines which are running constantly and
producing parts which ‘might’ be required in future and hence raising storage costs. He
decides to shut excess production and subordinate the machine to the bottleneck-
NCX10.
ELEVATE
When Bob gives Alex a present – a machine which would increase the production of
NCX10’s parts by 15%, thereby elevating the bottleneck.
3.0 (Five minutes)

List out all you remember from your Operations Courses of the first year

1. 3 constants –
a. Process
b. Project
c. Inventory
2. Moravic’s paradox
3. MRP I / MRP II
4. Concept of Clockspeed
5. Intro to Bottleneck – ‘minute saved at bottleneck is a minute saved at plant’
6. Systemic thinking

4.0 Give one example where you could use or have seen the use of what we saw in
the film