Reference no: EM132543818 , Length: 12 pages

In this assignment you need to produce a report based on your analyses of a fruit supply chain. Each student will receive two datafiles that represent two seasons of daily fruit picking / packing / transport and export activities along the supply chain. Your task is to analyse the information and data about this supply chain and produce a report. The data is rich. It is suggested that you start with this project straight away, do a few things, take some time off to think about what you have discovered and return with more ideas to test out.

STEP 1 : Use the data of the two harvesting seasons that were provided to you and perform a comprehensive analysis of this supply chain based on lean principles. This should include identifying muda, patterns and trends. Identify differences between the two seasons and whether any improvement or deteriorating trends exist from Season 1 to Season 2. Where necessary, make assumptions about costs and efficiencies to complete your analysis. Ensure that all your assumptions are clearly spelled out and develop a well-structured report that will provide a comprehensive diagnosis of the supply chain's performance. It is less important to come up with solutions to improve matters and more time should be spent on identifying all the patterns, opportunities, costs and losses.
With this limited data, try to construct measures for:
• Understanding supply chain revenue
• The main risks and key performance areas in this supply chain
• Adverse environmental impacts
• Social impacts
• Develop a daily, weekly and full season dashboard that will give the supply chain managers
enough benchmarking information to stimulate a drive for improvement. Each dashboard can only have three KPI's, so spend some time thinking about what are the most important parts of this supply chain.

STEP 2 : Using the guidelines of Hartmann and Dymond (2006) and Feizabadi et al (2019), perform an Agile analysis of this supply chain. Think of how you will advise the owners of this supply chain on their market strategy and identify opportunities where the supply chain may be configured differently to meet this strategy.

Your report does not need to contain a lot of text and doesn't need a comprehensive list of supply chain improvement recommendations. Rather spend more time visualising the data through graphs and spend some time explaining the patterns that you have discovered. Assume each graph that you insert in the report equates to 50 words.

You are asked to analyse a fruit supply chain that runs from several orchids, to a few packhouses and end up at the port for regular loading onto ships that take the fruit the market. The executives in the supply chain decided to provide you with daily totals and daily averages since that will be sufficient to conduct your level of analytics.

A brief description of the supply chain:

1. During the harvest season a random number of casual workers will arrive at the orchids to pick fruit. Fruit picking is not an exact science and productivity levels can vary from day to day.

2. Fruit is picked and left in crates at the side of the orchids. At this point in time a small sample will be taken to test the fruit quality since the farmers insist that any damages to the fruit beyond their farms should not be a penalty to them.

3. Fruit quality is seasonal, can range quite dramatically and is a significant price determinant in the market. Early and late in the season the qualities can be as low as zero because the fruit is picked green or in an over-ripe stage. However, mid-season can see fruit qualities going up to 50 index points, which attracts very good prices in the market. Unfortunately, quality will continuously deteriorate along the supply chain, depending on the conditions in the chain.

4. Several trucks will be dispatched every day to collect the fruit from the side of the orchids and deliver them onto pallets at the closest packhouse. Truck numbers dispatched can differ from day to day, depending on driver availability and breakdowns.

5. If trucks cannot collect all the fruit on a day, the crates are simply left at the orchid until the next day.

6. The trucks can do a limited number of trips between the orchids and packhouses. These cycle times vary depending on traffic conditions and the time spent in queues at the packhouses while waiting to be offloaded.

7. At the packhouses, fruit is left unrefrigerated on pallets before it is transferred into the packing lines. Packhouses are labour intensive and, similar the orchids, rely on casual labour on a day to day basis.

8. Sometimes fruit can wait more than a day on the pallets before it is packed and refrigerated. Once the fruit has been packed into boxes and placed in cold storage at the packhouses, the quality becomes more stable.

9. Cold stores are meant to keep fruit at a temperature of 4°C. However, these units are not always running at optimal temperatures and a "refrigeration efficiency" reflects how well the fruit's quality is currently been preserved in the cold storage units. The fruit is regularly sampled for quality.

10. During cold storage, export inspectors will check the fruit's quality and other biosecurity requirements. Fruit can only be sent to the port once it has been cleared by the inspectors. The inspection certificate is only valid for one day and fruit that was not dispatched on the same day will need to be inspected again.

11. Large vehicles collect the fruit boxes from the packhouse cold storage facilities and transport them to the port's cold storage warehouse. Similar to before, the number of vehicles dispatched, and the cycle times can differ on a day to day basis.

12. Cold storage at the port works in a similar fashion to the packhouses. A refrigeration efficiency determines how well the fruit is preserved during storage.

13. Ships arrive from time to time at the port and will clear out the entire cold storage before it departs. This I when the customer takes ownership of the fruit and at this stage money will change hands. The customer runs various businesses, including table fruit and a fruit juice factory and they are willing to buy fruit of any quality. They also have a composting business and will even remove fruit that has a zero quality index, however, the deal is that they do not pay for zero quality fruit since they do the company a favour by removing waste from expensive port cold storage facilities.

14. The fruit is normally handled on a first in first out (FIFO) basis.

15. Everything costs money, including inspector salaries, crates, trucks, floor space of cold storage facilities, shipping births, labour, etc...

Attachment:- supply.rar