JUL, AHMADNUR H.

BS Accountancy – 1B
BACM 1: Operations Management or Total Quality Management (TQM)

Case Study Eastern Gear, Inc.: Job Shop

Discussion Questions
1. What are the major problems being faced by Eastern Gear?
 Scheduling problems, these include the problem to reduce delivery lead time;
 Employee problems, these problems take into account the returned orders experienced by the
company, generally due to the failure to undergo one or more operations or the operations have been
improperly done by the employees; and
 Other production problems, such problems concerning about the bottlenecks that appear in the
production process, as well as the existing of the orders that are handled on a rush basis.

2. What action should Rhodes take to solve his problems?

 In terms of managing how to reduce total delivery lead time, I would like to suggest that Roger
Rhodes, as the president and founder of Eastern Gear, has to ask his management to order smaller amounts of
inventory more often based on accurate sales data and realistic forecasts, this aids the company to boost its rate
of inventory turnover, reducing the overall cost of carrying inventory. For sure, companies like Rhodes’s which
are trying to implement a just-in-time inventory management solution can best use this method.
 For the orders which have been returned caused by the failure to undergo one or more operations or
the operations have been improperly done by the employees, Rhodes has to give importance of the
collaboration among the managements in his company, though it has been mentioned that most of his
employees are skilled, he has to have a good relationship with his employees in that case, he can address the
problems by listening his employees.
 To solve the bottleneck, Rhodes has to examine the production schedule as has been mentioned that
the products his company produces are varied depending on the customer’s requirements and so varying
amount of the bottleneck’s time; by analyzing the production schedule, this leads to the creation of a product
mix that reduces the total needs for the bottleneck. While, existing of the orders that are handled on a rush
basis, Rhodes’s company has to make good communication with its customers, this allows the company to
inform its customers the capability of the company operations in producing the required order in the duration of
time, and with this, the customers might understand the side of the company and reconsider the time the order
has to deliver.

3. How can this case be related to operations strategy and process design concepts?
In such a way that this case involves operations strategy and process design, these concepts really bring
out the competitiveness of the company, its capability in addressing customers’ needs and wants, and producing
quality products that certainly satisfy customers; management of Eastern Gear confront major troubles through
the years of its operations thus the company has to come up with solutions that somehow lessen these problems,
as the business come into more profitable, there should be few reconstruction of operations just to cope up with
the problems. The case of the Eastern Gear shows positive in terms of service because it still tries its very best
just to satisfy its customers, a direct connection to customers, what design and quality they really need for their
orders; the company in this case really has crafted operations strategy and process design concepts.