Case Study Analysis

At least 800 words 

Casestudy 2

Muddy boots and smart wood

There was no question that the weekend was starting out as one Taylor would rather not be at work. However, she was the purchasing director of Vapid Lumber Industries (VLI), and the inventory had to be counted, one stick of lumber after another. The day was gray, the rain had started, and the workers would not show up today. This was the only time the lumberyard was quiet, the saws were not running, the forklifts not racing around, the fans not blowing, and the boss not screaming at some worker for not creating the door joints fast enough. Taylor’s job was to walk the yard every 30 days, rain, sleet, hot, or cold. Today, in the springtime, the yard had more than nearly twice the lumber as last month. Bill, the sales representative, had been working very hard the last 2 months to stack orders, because he wanted a large bonus for his summer vacation corning in a few months. Then Taylor would do purchasing and sales and inventory together. Taylor went into the trailer office to get her pad of paper and pen. The yard was already ankle-deep in mud from the forklift and the flatbeds running around for the last month, and it seemed to be raining for the last 30 days.

The week before, Bill had been complaining that it would make his job and her job easier if they had a bar code system to read the inventory. Last year, the lumber distributor had starting stapling bar codes on the ends of each long and short piece of wood But that was doing them no good at VLI, where the boss, Bob, would not hear of it. Bob was always trying to find ways to cut corners on the job. It took Taylor 2 years to talk Bob into buying a computer and convincing him that the Internet and simple spreadsheets could him with flow of products around the plant. That was enough technology for him, although Bob did seem to appreciate the monthly spreadsheets of how much wood was being delivered late from several distributors, and how the inventory and waste wood was fluctuating. That caused a few men to lose their jobs at first, but the use of the computer had not eased the inventory counting process or the inventory sheet written by hand that had to be sent to the home office in Texas each month. Taylor and Bill tried many times over the last year to convince the people at the home office that having 230 inventory sheets faxed each month could be replaced by sending the same information by Internet.

The big idea

The lumber waiting for cutting and shaping into door frames, window frames, and other construction special orders was sitting outside in the mud. There were 12 rows of lumber, each stacked about 10 feet high, and about four loads per row. As Taylor walked around, drinking her morning coffee, she decided to simply walk the yard and see what could be done with the use of bar code readers or RFID. Stuffing the pad and pencil into her jacket pocket, she examined each of the bar code labels on the ends of the wood just delivered. It was starting to rain again, and the ground fog was still around. The sky showed no promise of today’s weather getting much better. As Taylor examined the bar codes, she noticed some of them were clean and readable, but as she rounded the corner to those stacks of lumber that had been in the yard for a week, she noticed some of the tags were torn. Must be either the manhandling or forklift driver running into things again. Or could it be the rain? She felt a few of the tags; they were definitely soggy and could easily be torn or scraped as someone bumped into the ends. Taylor thought, if we could use a bar code reader for each flatbed load as it arrives, she would have an instant count of what was arriving, instead of having to count each one on the flatbed before she had it offloaded. Also if she had a portable reader, she could probably be using one now as she walked the yard. It looked like most of the lumber had bar codes on the ends; probably about 10% seemed damaged or were just missing.

So why not tell Bob to buy a bar code reader? That way, he would only have to pay for her time to walk quickly around the yard, rather than having to do it three times, as the company demanded she do. Counting the same thing three times was boring, and it was cold and wet, and it took all day, and sometimes most of Sunday.

As she was coming around the end of the lumber stack, she noticed a pickup truck. It was Bob. He never came in on Saturday. As Bob came over, Taylor decided to tell him her idea for using bar codes instead of hand counting the inventory.

Bob said, “You have what sounds like a good idea, Taylor, but the boys in Texas want an eyeball count. They don’t trust technology. They trust you to see and count what is really out here in the yard. And that’s what they want done at the other 229 lumberyards today, all over the United States.” Bob went on to say that the home office had been burned in the past with computer technology. Also, he said, that this was a hands-on operation, a very simple manufacturing job. You take rough wood, cut it down, and make builder-grade door frames, window frames, door blocks and pallets. The manufacturing process was simple, and simple cost less money. That was the theory, and that was what Texas wanted and was what they would get. Bob then left Taylor to go into the office to pick up some papers, and he was gone in a few minutes.

Taylor just stood there, in the rain, looking at her watch. It was 7:15 a.m. She would be here until at least 5 p.m. How to convince the management here and at the home office that technology could be useful was the question she pondered, as she finished her coffee and began counting boards — one at a time.

Case analysis

What should Taylor do to convince Bob that the use of bar codes could be helpful?

Should Taylor and Bill go to Bob with an even more outlandish idea, such as RFID?