Martin Trailers

1: maintain sufficient stock for long delivery parts: the painted steel and springs have 8-10 weeks delivery time. In order to shorter the total lead time, it is necessary to eliminate this long idle time.

2: Material management planning system: the inaccurate procedure should be replaced. All the forecasts in the company are based on Martins expected number of each trailer model that would be required from the plant each month. If this forecast is miss-forecasted, but material and production department will suffer from it.

According to the case, the parts shortages present persistent problems and upset the production schedules several times a year. For Martin Trailers Limited, both material management and production have their own planning and scheduling methods; however, it is hard for both departments to corporate effectively according to the customer demand, especially for the rush orders in May and June. Components shortage does delay the production, which would increase the lead time that the customers do not want to see. From the manufacturing perspective, if there is a material shortage for the targeted product, the labor would switch to another product to avoid idle time: producing the products that not demanded the most definitely decrease the production efficiency, which would probably increase unnecessary inventory. Even though material clerk is currently using a new planning procedure to make better forecast, purchasing agent tends to rely on requests from the production department's report about parts running out. This reactive material management will eventually cause material shortage or delayed supplies.

3: Better alarm system for the production department: when certain parts are running out, it is the production manager's responsibility to alarm the purchasing to make orders. However, when to alarm is critical. Since each parts have different delivery or lead time for their suppliers. It is important to make sure the remaining material are enough for the time when the new orders are on their way being delivered. This requires a good supplier management skills, which provides accurate delivery time for parts.

The changes should be made as soon as possible because the changes will be made progressively.