Earthwise Pallet Recyclers Earthwise Pallet Recyclers (EPR) is a small business that refurbishes damaged wood pallets in Saskatoon. Gary Wurst founded EPR in 1996 after he saw so many unwanted damaged pallets lying around in construction sites. He started collecting them, fixing them, and selling them at a low price ($3$5 each) to local manufacturers and distributors that use pallets. Currently he has about 12 employees, including approximately 4 nailers. The company takes in approximately 2,800 pallets each week and produces approximately 2,000 refurbished pallets. Pallets that are in poor condition are dismantled and their pieces are used to refurbish other pallets. Each nailer produces approximately 130 refurbished pallets per day (8-hour shift). Gary would like to see this number increase to 160 pallets per day. Nailer responsibilities include assessing a damaged pallet (called a core), taking damaged boards off, nailing replacement boards in, and repairing the frame using a scab (a piece of 2" 4" lumber with a notch cut out of it) or a block (a piece of 2" 4" lumber). A more detailed list of elements and time measurements (in seconds) for five cycles of a nailer fixing a pallet are given below. Also given is a layout diagram of the EPR shop. Occasionally a nailer runs out of good boards and has to walk to the chop saw workstation or other good-board bins to retrieve good boards. Part of the problem is that there are different sizes of pallets so nailers need different sizes of good boards. Nailers are also responsible for moving both the core stacks and the finished stacks to and from their workstation, and moving bad core stacks to the dismantler. They use a manual pallet jack to do so. Each leg of these trips takes approximately two minutes. There are only two pallet jacks in the shop. Cores and fixed pallet stacks are transported in and out of the shop using a forklift. Questions What is the processing time of a pallet? What suggestions can you make to Gary to increase EPRs productivity?

Building a Pallet (in seconds)	1	2	3	4	5
Pick pallet from cores pile (in workstation) and put on nail table	8	9	9	7	10
Assess pallet: if bad, put it aside; if good, proceed	6	7	4	14	8
Hit nails down with a hammer	2	5	6	4	3
Rip off broken boards with crowbar	8	12	10	5	8
Remove broken boards by hand	6	11	8	12	11
Throw broken boards in garbage bin (on the left)	1	2	2	2	1
Grab good boards from good-board bin (on the right)	11	10	28	25	21
Place good boards on pallet	8	5	3	17	3
Nail good boards in with nail gun	3	7	10	6	6
Place block/scab in	3	10	9	8	3
Hammer in block/scab	6	4	31	3	9
Flip pallet	2	2	10	4	2
Hit nails down with hammer	7	11	20	15	5
Rip off broken boards with crowbar	9	6	13	14	8
Remove broken boards by hand	11	14	9	18	13
Throw broken boards in garbage bin	1	1	1	2	2
Grab good boards from good-board bin	48	6	5	4	3
Place good boards on pallet	13	3	10	5	7
Nail good boards in with nail gun	17	6	10	8	6

Move pallet to finished pallet pile (in workstation)

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Source: Joy-Anne Caswell, "Earthwise Pallet Recyclers" (term paper), Dec 2004, COMM 205: Introduction to Operations Management.