Designing Production Systems Process Selection and Capacity Planning Essay

Designing Production Systems Process Selection and Capacity Planning - Essay Example It also aims to discuss some practices that made it a better or a different manufacturing company. Rockwell Automations Marion plant is located in the western part of North Carolina. The plant started its operations in 1996 with a total land area of 174,000 sq feet. Its major products include "mounted spherical and tapered roller bearings with shaft sizes ranging from 1 3_16 inches to 5 inches. These bearings go into such things as mining machinery, fans and other air-handling equipment, waste treatment equipment, forest products processing equipment, food processing machinery and metals processing equipment." (John S. McClenahen) The production floor of the plant is divided into two major areas, which has a total of 20 manufacturing cells. In the front area 16 manufacturing cells producing 351 products which comprises 80% of the plants total sales revenue. At the back are remaining 4 cells, producing items that comprise the remaining 20% of the plant's total sales revenue. This is also called the build on demand area. To date, the company still continues to help manufacturers worldwide succeed through their industrial information control and information solutions, giving them the competitive advantage they so rightfully deserve. Leading companies did not become model companies wi... And Rockwell Automation's Marion plant was never an exception. Basically, the plant is lean, with its processes and practices tailored to fir into the JIT systems. The details of their practices are described in the following context. A. Competitive Edge The practice that made Marion plant unique is in its circle of analysis and improvement of its products and processes. An article published in IndustryWeek described this process. "This cycle begins with product data analysis, moves to describing the current value stream, then to charting the future flow of the value stream, proceeds to achieving the goals by taking tools from the toolbox and comes back to data analysis again. Along the way, product and process priorities get set and action timelines are established." (John S. Mclenahen) Data and figures of the product and its processes provide very important information as to where production is heading and what areas can still be improved. However, these data and figures will only remain as data unless utilized properly. And the Marion plant people have all the tools and resources necessary, books and literature, to assist them in this aspect, especially when something comes up. Even then, these tools will also become useless if the people who have access to it do not use it or do not have the expertise and experience to use it. Marion plant employees are empowered employees. Empowered employees enable companies to reap positive rewards. In a book entitled Empowering Employees, the authors excerpted an article from Oraganizational Dynamics ("Seven Questions Every Leader Should Consider," A Autumn 1997) authored by Robert Quinn and Gretchen Spreitzer. The excerpt cited four characteristics that

Economic analysis of Obesity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Economic analysis of Obesity - Essay Example According to the World Health Organization, obesity is defined as the condition marked by excess body fat (Youfa and May 8). Body Mass Index (BMI) {weight (kg)/ height (m) 2} is widely used to assess obesity. For adults, world health organization defines obesity using BMI cutpoints of 25 and 30 kg/m2, respectively. It has also been recommended that waist circumference cutpoints of 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women be used to define central obesity. For children, BMI percentile of age and gender has been utilized particularly in the U.S. Specifically, overweight is defined as a BMI greater than 95th BMI percentile (Youfa and May 18). Generally, however, it is argued that obese people are defined as those who are more than 20 percent above their medically determined ideal weight. Statistics indicate that, in the past few decades, there has been an increase with the number of Americans who are considered to be obese from about 25 percent to about 33 percent (Ogalthorpe 94). Studies have documented that among the major contributing factors include poor eating habits and lack of exercise. Due to change in economic times and various laws regarding health and economic issues, many people are faced with the risk of becoming obese. With these deliberations, it has been argued that both economically advantaged and economically disadvantages become victims of obese. For example, rich people are argued to be busy with their jobs and businesses. Although they have all the resources necessary to have the diet they desire, they lack enough time to exercise (Sassi 102). Children who come from rich families are argued to have a tendency of taking meals of their choices as long as their desires are met. They go for sweet snacks and other foods with high contents of calories. As a consequence, they gain weight, but most of them fail to exercise. On the other hand, poor people may lack enough money to place a balanced diet on their tables. They tend to go for cheap meals, which most of them, unfortunately, contains a lot of starch. Getting alternative meals or other variety of diets is difficult. This leads to overweight (Youfa and May 12). Economic analysis Economic analysis in relation to obesity can be viewed from two perspectives. One involves economic as a contributing factor to obesity and economic in terms of consequences of obesity. When prices of calories fall, it is apparent that many people will be able to purchase plenty of it. This is argued to be true because, when food prices are high, some people find it difficult to purchase them (Youfa and May 17). Another issue of concern is when income for many people has gone up. It is obvious that when income has gone up, many people are able to afford different foods and in plenty. The apparent consequence of these deliberations is that rise in weight would be a natural phenomena. Unlike in developing societies, industrialized or post industrialized societies like the United States have problems with balancing weight gain and exercise (Ogalthorpe 91). For example, in developing societies, physical exertion is required to provide with labor. This involves