CASE 1: NATURAL DESIGNS, INC.

I. The business of Natural Designs, Inc. (NDI) is focused on manufacturing a range of products of bird feeders and garden accessories as well as conducting presentations on birds and wildlife.

Based on this, Jim McMaster accordingly makes decisions in order to run the operations of the business on a tactical basis. These decisions include the following: 1) manufacturing-related: sourcing of raw materials, production schedule, and distribution of products; 2) wildlife presentations: scheduling and preparation of presentations.
• The order quantity placed by distributors collectively differs tactically, thus Jim and his team has to be able to source raw materials for the bird feeders and other garden accessories from their suppliers at any given time, depending on the demand for raw materials. This entails for Natural Designs, Inc. to cultivate a good partnership with its accredited suppliers so that it could easily tap its suppliers for additional orders without compromising quality and lead times.
• Since NDI’s product range consists of 500 SKUs, the production schedule needs to be carefully plot so as to maximize machine hours and labour hours, taking into account machine set-up time, preventive maintenance, and scheduling of labour. Forecasting of product quantities to be manufactured is deemed necessary in order to stock the appropriate levels of inventory for each SKU.
• Putting into consideration that the retailers of NDI may be dispersed geographically, the daily route of the fleet has to be mapped strategically. Before dispatching the vans for delivery, van capacity has to be maximized and the placement of the orders per distributor should be arranged accordingly to the fleet’s route in a last-in, first-out basis. Commitments in terms of delivery dates also have to be taken into account.
• Scheduling of the