Read the Chapter 9 Case Study "Facility Layout at Wheeled Coach Ambulance" and watch the video, then write a summary of at least 300 words using the accompanying discussion questions to guide your essay written in APA style, with a reference page and a cover page.

https://www.mathxl.com/Student/MediaPopup.aspx?typ...

Facility Layout at Wheeled Coach

When President Bob Collins began his career at Wheeled Coach, the

world’s largest manufacturer of ambulances, there were only a handful of

employees. Now the firm’s Florida plant has a workforce of 350. The

physical plant has also expanded, with offices, R&D, final assembly,

and wiring, cabinetry, and upholstery work cells in one large building.

Growth has forced the painting work cell into a separate building,

aluminum fabrication and body installation into another, inspection and

shipping into a fourth, and warehousing into yet another.

Like many growing companies, Wheeled Coach was not able to design its

facility from scratch. And while management realizes that

material-handling costs are a little higher than an ideal layout would

provide, Collins is pleased with the way the facility has evolved and

employees have adapted. The aluminum cutting work cell lies adjacent to

body fabrication, which, in turn, is located next to the body-

installation work cell. And while the vehicle must be driven across a

street to one building for painting and then to another for final

assembly, at least the ambulance is on wheels. Collins is also

satisfied with the flexibility shown in design of the work cells. Cell

construction is quite modular and can accommodate changes in product mix

and volume. Additionally, work cells are typically small and moveable,

with many work benches and staging racks borne on wheels so that they

can be easily rearranged and products transported to the assembly line.

Assembly-line balancing is one key problem facing Wheeled Coach and

every other repetitive manufacturer. Produced on a schedule calling for

four 10-hour work days per week, once an ambulance is on one of the six

final assembly lines, it must move forward each day to the next

workstation. Balancing just enough workers and tasks at each of the

seven workstations is a never-ending challenge. Too many workers end up

running into each other; too few can’t finish an ambulance in 7 days.

Constant shifting of design and mix and improved analysis has led to

frequent changes.

Discussion Questions*

1. Develop a layout model for Wheeled Coach. Include in your model each

step in the process. Assigned the steps with predecessors. Use minutes

as your time increment. Calculate a cycle time, theoretical time,

balance the line using the longest task time rule and determine the

efficiency from your simulated data.

2. What other analytical techniques are available to help a company like Wheeled Coach deal with layout problems?

3. What suggestions would you make to Bob Collins about his layout?

4. How would you measure the “efficiency” of this layout?