The National Cranberry case is a $$classic$$ and has become a point of reference for nearly everyone who

has attended business school. A common pitfall in analyzing the case is to become mired in too much detail,

so be careful to maintain the big picture while addressing the questions. If you feel that you cannot address

certain parts of the analysis because of the lack of information, feel free to make any reasonable assumptions.

For simplicity, you can assume the following:

$$ Trucks arrive uniformly over a $12-$hour period $(7$am $7$pm$),$ and each truck carries exactly $75$ barrels

of cranberries.

$$ The receiving plant starts working at $7$am$.$

This case does not need to be analyzed using queuing theory that deals with variabilities.

Case Questions:

$(1)$ What are the main issues faced by Receiving Plant No$.1($RP$1)($list at least $2$ that are related to the

course content$)?$

$(2)$ Draw a process flow diagram of the cranberry process beginning with Receiving and ending with the

Bailey Mills $($you can ignore Sorting and Shipping activities at the end of the process. See a template

to draw the process flow diagram attached$).$

$(3)$ Compute the capacity of each process step $($in barrels per hour$).$

$(4)$ Consider a peak harvest day $(18,000$ barrels of berries unloaded with $70\%$ of them wet harvested$).$

Identify the bottleneck of the process.

$(5)$ When would the processing be completed approximately on a peak day? $($You may focus on the

bottleneck and find the completion time of the bottleneck. For simplicity, you may assume that the

bottleneck receives the first barrel of cranberries at $8$am due to workflow from earlier steps, and once

started, it keeps works after that.$)$

$(6)$ When would you first observe trucks to queue in a day and when will the queue disappear? $($You do

not need to apply queuing theory to this case. You can assume that the $$net$$ surplus of unprocessed

cranberries are held in appropriate bins, and when the capacity of these bins are reached, trucks need

to wait for bins to become available and thus they start a queue.$)$

$(7)$ How effective are the strategies of purchasing more dryers & converting dry bins towards addressing

each of the operational issues you identified in question $(1)?$ Please explain the effectiveness of the

two options towards resolving each of the operational issues.

$(8)$ Summarize your recommendations to Hugh Schaeffer to help him improve the performance of the

plant. Try to include both the pros and cons of your recommendations.