Kirsten's Cookie Company Case Study

Kirsten's Cookie Company Case Study

1. How long will it take you to fill a rush order of 1 dozen? Explain your logic.

According to the estimated breakdown of the time it takes to complete the process it should take at the minimal 27 minutes to complete the order. Strictly going on the numbers given, (6 minutes for wash and mix, 2 minutes to dish up, 1 minute to the oven, 10 minutes to bake, 5 minutes to cool down, 2 minutes to pack, and 1 minutes to exchange payment) approximately 27 minutes should be enough time to complete the order. There are certain mitigating circumstances that would cause a delay in the process, such as the person placing the order not being familiar with the variety of items offered and the number of orders placed ahead of the order. Being that the owner's have already established that cookies orders are made at the time of request the fact that it is a rush order should not have any bearing on the production time. I think that in the future there could potentially be major problems. One potential issue is the backup of orders; if multiple calls come in at once it is impossible for them to be started immediately because there is only one processor and one oven, only one batch can bake at a time.

2. How many orders can you fill in a night, assuming you are open four hours each night? Explain your logic (assume 1 dozen per order and unlimited demand)

Assuming that we stay open for four hours each night I believe that we can fill approximately 8 orders of cookies. In four hours there are 240 minutes and the estimated time to prepare and complete one order of a dozen cookies is 27 minutes; therefore 240/27minutes equals 8 orders. Of course this is a under utilization of our time because we can take and start preparing orders that are taken while a batch is in the oven. So if we have one batch of a dozen in the oven with one order on standby we could complete twice as many orders, 16 orders. The rationale behind this is the first three steps in the process take 9 minutes while the oven time is 10 minutes. While the one batch is in the oven there is a one minute gap in which we could take an order and use the remaining nine minutes to prepare it to go into the oven. This process would work best if one of us completes the first half of the process and the other completes the process. Or the alternative would be that each of us completes the cycles; example being that she takes and completes an order and I take the next, each of us completing every other order. The issue we this techniques is that one of each may move quicker than the other, example I might be able to package the dozens quicker or spend too much time talking to customers that are coming in to purchase the goods. The first method negates this issue.

3. How much of your own and your roommate's valuable time will it take to fill each order?

It takes approximately 40 minutes of our valuable time to fill each order. We know that it takes approximately 27 minutes to complete one order of a dozen cookies. The other 13 minutes comes from the amount of preparatory time it takes before the order and the assumption that we will not be able to maintain our initial pace. Given that we are operating a business at night and working during the day fatigue in bound to set in over time and reduce the rate of output. We also need to take into account the amount of time it may take for a customer to decide on e the type of cookies they want. If the consumer is unfamiliar with the menu item it will take more of our time to provide adequate customer service time to present the goods. Good customer services is a factor that will definitely impact our valuable time during order taking and purchasing because while we may take additional minutes to deal with the customer because the business is just starting and we want he return business, we could have been starting another order.

4. Because your baking trays can hold exactly one dozen cookies, you will produce and sell cookies by the dozen. Should you give any discount for people who order two dozen cookies, three dozen cookies, or more? If so, how much? Will it take you any longer to fill a two-dozen cookie order than a one-dozen cookie order?

I would sell the cookies at a flat rate by the dozen. The price would take into the cost of materials and the cost of packaging, which was estimated to cost $.70/dozen. The pricing would also take into account the cost of labor and the convenience of the commodity. By convenience I am specifically referring to the fact that the goods are made to order fresh, hot, quick, and easily accessible. Given that I've estimated that we are only going to be able to complete at most 16 orders per night I would not base discounts on the number of dozens ordered at once. I estimate that most of our late night customers will only order one or two dozen, not too many will order three plus. Also there could be a downside to having more than three dozen ordered at once and that is if multiple customers do it we would have to stop taking orders much earlier in the night because it would exceed our four hour time span. A discount maybe applied in a manner much like what one would expect from a pizza place, such as buy 12 dozen and get the 13th dozen free. A coupon may be apart of the packaging that you cut out and present all twelve at purchasing or it there might be a cookie card that every time a customer purchases a dozen it is hole-punched. Completing an order of two dozen takes an additional 17 to 20 minutes. As stated in our business concept the mixer holds two dozen so we can deduct that part of the process as well as the purchasing portion of the time because the customer will be purchasing the item all together and not separately.

Kirsten's Cookies Flowchart

6min 2min 1min 10min/doz 5min 2min/doz 1min

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* Processed on: 11-01-10 9:10 PM CDT

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Cookies By Brianna Winters

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