1. Evaluation of the Changes that Dore Dore has made to its Children’s division
The use of cellular manufacturing in the Children’s division would generally bring about greater efficiency for the following reasons. First and foremost, it would save time by reducing transfer time. Given that the production machinery would be clustered together in a cell, transfer of work-in-progress along the production line would be much faster. Second, in a cellular system the workers are generally cross-trained. This allows greater utilization of the human resource at hand and thereby reduces worker idle time significantly. Third, given the cross training of worker, a bottle-neck is less likely to occur or be a problem. Whenever work-in –progress starts accumulating in a particular operation, the cross trained workers would be able to help prevent the creation of a bottle-neck. To surmise, cellular production would be largely beneficial particularly since it would drastically decrease the flow time.

However, it has to be recognized that the cellular manufacturing layout would also entail costs. First, there would have to be multiple machinery that would have to be acquired as now machines would not be shared according to the task performed. Acquisition of new machines would certainly be costly. Second, another related disadvantage would be that there would be greater idle time experienced by the machines and consequent inefficient use of the machines. Third, it is also necessary to be cognizant of potential resistance from workers who may be used to the traditional production line and may not be keen on changing to a cellular layout. As a related matter it would also be necessary to address the threat that would be felt by the supervisors whose roles may be made redundant by the change.

2. Using a cellular layout in the hosiery department
The above stated benefits would