National Cranberry Cooperative

1) Develop a process flow diagram for processing cranberries (both wet and dry). Show the capacities at the different stages.

((see attached flow chart))

2) What are the sources of variabilityaffecting NCC's operation?

There are a few sources of variability affecting NCC's operation and efficiency. The first is contributing to the bottleneck issues with the drying units. With the increased popularity in wet harvest, which generates 20% more yield, more of NCC's volume goes to wet berries rather than dry. Their infrastructure was not built to accomodate this variability. Another source is the difference in labor required for fresh fruit versus processed fruit. Fresh fruit is a labor-intensive process that uses more than 400 workers during a peak season. Processed fruit is managed more by machines than laborers. With processed fruit, there generally are more problems in process such as waiting time on the unload process, increasing cost of trucks etc.

Another is in general idea of what percent of berries are dry and wet, it is not always accurate as we can see in Exhibit 2. The assumption is that the breakdown is 70% wet, 30% dry. However the chart of Deliveries of Process Berries (p11) shows that most days during 1970 the percent of wet delivered was far less than 70%. This inconsistency may cause issues in NCC's capacity and labor planning.

In the inspection process where the berries receive a grade of 2A or 3, it was found that many of the 2A berries were being disposed when graded a 3. This inconsistency causes NCC money as 2nd quality berries are being thrown away because of the chief berry inspector thinks otherwise.

3) Suppose that a peak harvest-season day involves 18,000 barrels of berries, 70% of them wet harvested, arriving over a twelve-hour period from 7 am to 7 pm. Would trucks have to wait to unload? When during the day would trucks be waiting? How much truck waiting time would you expect?

Per the below, trucks would have to wait. The waiting would start at around 10:03am and waiting would be a around 3 hrs 40 mins.

Arrival Rate (assuming 70% wet, 30% dry, 12 hr day)

Wet = 1050 bbl/hr ((18,000/12)x70%)

Dry = 450 bbl/hr ((18,000/12)x30%)

Processing starts at 11 am. Holding bins will continue to be filled, subject to the max capacities for wet berries (3200 bbls) and dry berries (4000 bbls). Wet berry holding bins would be filled after 3200/1050 minutes after 7 am i.e. at 10:03 am and the trucks carrying wet berries would have to wait after that. The bins capable of holding dry berries would