Chocoholics PLC Factory Floor Plan

University Degree Business and Administrative studies

Chocoholics PLC Factory Floor Plan

Chocoholics employ 70 staff and over half of these work in the production department. From this, I can assume that there are 30 production staff, plus supervisors. As chocoholics has only 30 staff, there is a limitation to how much chocolate they can produce.

The way Chocoholics currently operates is by producing chocolate on their production lines for 4 and a half days, and then the machinery is turned off and hand made chocolate is produced for half a day. This way of producing chocolate is very inefficient because for half the day, the machinery is not being used. The same applies to the area for making the hand made chocolate, as this is not used for 4 and a half days. If chocoholics were to make itself as efficient as possible then the machines should be all used at the same time and so should the area for hand made chocolates. This could be done by employing more staff. These new staff that are employed would be put on the machines as they have little experience and skills and the more skilled workers would make the handmade chocolates.

Chocoholics produce its product on six different product lines, which are laid out, by product. This way of producing chocolate is dangerous, as a breakage on 1 production line will affect the whole business. If there is a reduction in 1 type of chocolate it will be very expensive to change the machinery to make a more popular one.

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The new layout that I have created for chocoholics has only three production lines, compared to the six they had before. The three production lines however are not laid out by product and are able to produce all of the types of chocolate on each line. This way, if a breakage occurs on one of the production lines the company will still be able to carry on producing all of the chocolate for the selection boxes. If a type of chocolate becomes unpopular and was no longer going to be made, then that production line would still be used in this new layout, and would not be wasted until the machinery was changed. The packaging line is now directly at the end of the production line with the box wrapping machine just after that. The workers now don’t have to move very far when going from one part of the factory to another.

To change, Chocoholics could introduce three new strategies, which are JIT (Just In Time), TQM (Total Quality Management), and Quality Circles.

JIT – Just In Time

This method of production is particularly concerned with stock. The stock is ordered to be delivered just when it is needed, so no stockpiles arise. Thos is good because stock like cocoa and sugar for making chocolate can expire and waste. For this to be effective the company needs reliable suppliers so they can supply the goods when they are needed. If the suppliers can’t do this, production stops and the company will be losing money and also customers.

TQM – Total Quality Management

There are three types:

Feed forward – Check quality of materials before you start
Concurrent – Check quality of materials while being made
Feedback – Which is checking the end product

This is a Japanese approach, which makes everyone responsible for the quality issue. It enables the company to be working as a team. The result of this should be, less waste, increased efficiency and better quality

Quality Circles

This is another Japanese approach where groups in the organisation comprising of all areas come together to regularly discuss quality issues. This enables the company to use Single Status Employment.