Buckeye Ball produced baseballs and softballs for professional competition or serious amateurs. In order to ensure quality and prompt availability, the company manufactured these two items in the United States. Other extensions of the product line were imported from Asia.
The U.S. factory operated under a union contract that limited working hours to 35 per week, but offset this with flexible rules allowing any worker to fill any of the job requirements. The production strategy was to schedule level runs of the two products on a weekly basis, which allowed week to week adjustment to meet variability in demand.
Raw Materials
Ball production required leather and nylon, a solid core that corresponded to the following usage per item: Material | Softballs | Baseballs | Leather (in2) | 5 | 4 | Nylon (in2) | 6 | 3 | Core (oz) | 4 | 2 |
The available material for the forecast production run was 5,400 (in2) of Nylon, 6,000 (in2) of leather, and 250 pounds of core material.
Very fine thread was used to final stitch the balls that had to be imported from Japan. These were packaged in a kit that could be used interchangeably with either product. So, one kit was required for either a Softball or a Baseball, and the import broker had a partial container of 1,500 kits scheduled for delivery.
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Caution- This case was written by the instructor to demonstrate course concepts with most data made up. All your work should be based only on the information provided within the case.
Labor
Labor planning was simplified by the flexibility to assign any job to any worker. This allowed a stable, weekly workforce of 100 available to work on production. The Baseball required two hours of total labor for complete assembly, and the Softball used slightly more at 2.5.
Market Information
Just about any
