Universal Pulp And Paper: West Coast Division

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 2
PROCESS FLOW 4
CURRENT PROCESS EVALUATION 4
DECISION BASIS 6
ACTION PLAN ALTERNATIVES 6
CONCLUSION 8
APPENDIX 1 9
APPENDIX 2 10
REFERENCES 11


INTRODUCTION

The West Coast Division is a paper and pulp manufacturing plant. It primarily produces newsprint for the daily newspapers which constitutes 95 per cent of the production. Its price conscious end consumers expect reasonable paper quality. Apart from these, they also concern with the arrival of the newspaper on time which means delivery schedule has to be organized effectively by the plant. Specialty paper products are the second type of the production of the plant. According to various customer specifications, plant meets the orders by 5 per cent of its production. Customers order in small quantities but expect high quality. Therefore they do not hesitate to pay premium prices but want their products to have unique sizes, shapes, colors and textures according to their needs.

Two different productions necessitate different process requirements. For the newsprint production, the demand is continuous and the volumes are high, so line-flow process is required. In this process, mass production requires highly automated and specialized equipments for high standardization. Naturally, this leads to low labor requirements. In line-flow process, the goods have no variety, and changing products and volumes are difficult. Operation continues 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Thus interrupting the process is expensive and not preferred. Additionally, capital investment is very high but in return efficiency is high as well.

Besides, specialty paper products require batch flow type process. This process is disconnected with some dominant flows, in which outputs are processed differently. Unlike line flow process of newsprint paper, in batch flow process variable cost is high. Special products are produced in low volumes, however it is possible to produce multitude of...