Business Case

1. At what stages in the brick production process is inventory held?

Since 1960, The Triangle Brick Company has believed in old fashion craftsmanship. With technology advances in the brick creating process, Triangle Brick Company is able to have a more productive process with the same great quality. The process begins with the mining of an abundant amount of Triassic Shell, or clay that is found on sight. The ground is ripped up, bulldozed into piles, loaded onto trucks, and hauled to the plant. Once they arrive at the plant, the clay is dumped into the primary crasher. Since the clay is so hard, dry and in such large pieces, they crush it into smaller pieces and then transported to the raw materials transfer building where there are enough raw materials to last up to two weeks. This is where the raw materials inventory is taken.

The clay is then put through several stages until it is in brick form. The clay is put through pleated screens and powerful hammer until in a flour consistency. Once in a flour consistency, it is sent to five, 65 ton silos. This is another station where they are able to take inventory of the product. From the silos it is taken to the plant and dispensed in a pug mill where it mixes with water. Air that had been mixed into the fine clay is now extracted through a vacuum. The clay is then forced through a forming device called a dye, where it forms 18 foot long ribbons. It is then textured and trimmed. This process produces 4,300

brick per hour or 12 every second. Surface treatments are added and then the brick is colored. The colors vary from deep birch reds, to warm earth tones to cool pastas. The brick is then cut into 110 sections and fit to size and thickness as demanded. Once the spacing's through computer programming are set, the bricks are sent to waiting cars, which hold about 18,258 module bricks in each. Brick then goes to firing areas. Dying, firing, cooling and flashing can take approximately 57 hours. After a few more processes the brick is stacked and restacked by large industrial robots that stack 20,000 brick per hour. The brick is then restacked in a cube configuration containing 530 modular bricks. This is where the brick is automatically indexed into another holding area to wait for packaging. Here the process held the inventory before strapping and loading the packages.

2. To what extent does Triangle use information technology in the inventory control process?

Information technology plays an important role at Triangle Brick Company. With their innovative use of automated computerized equipment, Triangle Brick Company has brought drastic improvements in the way they buy, inspect and deliver their brick. Technology is used in loading and analyzing the amount of raw materials and final produced clay after it is mixed with the water and air removal. When they