Stickley Furniture

Stickley Furniture

Stickley Furniture founded in 1900 by brothers Leopold and George Stickley manufacturing fine cherry, white oak, and mahogany furniture with a prestigious line of mission oak furniture. Stickley Furniture has a production facility outside of Syracuse, New York but now has various showrooms in New York State, Connecticut and North Carolina. Employing 1,350 employees, Stickley Furniture has been able to gain report with local customers and gain a large market share in the north eastern part of the country. With continued growth and technological advances, they have the opportunity to increase production and streamline production processes. (Stevenson, 2012)

There are different types of production processing that can be used, such as job shop, batch, repetitive, or continuous as the primary mode of operation. Job shop consists of a variety of custom-made products that are produced in batch numbers but somewhat few in diversity. The batch process occurs when many similar items are produced at one time, stage by stage from station to station and many items are produced simultaneously. Repetitive processing is large categories of standardized items are produced at one time in factory lines. The continuous processing method is products that are being processed are continuously in motivation with activities being done to them as they are moved down the line.

Stickley Furniture uses a variety of processes to complete each piece of furniture that was developed to utilize their seasonal demand to their benefit. The company uses the job shop production process, because they employ skilled and experienced workers. Stickley Furniture uses the job shop process, because they produce a limited line of furniture that is in high quality, and they do not run large factories like other furniture companies; instead, they focus on quality craftsmanship. Stickley also uses the batch process, and have a continuous flow of production going at all times, which allows them to meet the demands placed on them by their customers. The batch process is used for the various types of chairs, for example, pieces of wood get cut, are fed into the computer, sanded, and glued together. Even though batch processing is a secondary description of the whole, it is also similar in that the specific pieces that are produced in bulk are dispatched from station to station where particular tasks are applied to producing them before they get sent into the next for the following procedure. This is proven by the fact that there are two high seasons in a year, and other two low market seasons. Therefore during the second and fourth quarters, when demand is low there is production of a high number of furniture which is that is stored into the inventory. The continuous production process is the variable cost of electricity which is very low, at $60,000 per month, considering their productivity that twenty thousand boards are cut each day. The process is also flexible as not all the boards are fixed into completed furniture. Others are left to cater for customer preferences, repairs and sudden abrupt demands that may arise any time.

Stickley Furniture production is high; its entire finished and partially completed inventory is duly recorded. The management does this to increase the quality of their production, by keeping track of the status and location of the completed and partially completed furniture. Although there are many tasks done alongside, each job it goes with a particular barcode that facilitates a placement of job and operation. As each operation is completed, the operator removes a bar code sticker and delivers it to the scheduling office where it is scanned into the computer, thereby enabling production control to keep track of progress on a job, and to know its location in the shop. Management keeps track of job status and location during processing, by attaching a bar code, which identifies the job and the operation. Once the job has been completed, the bar code is then removed and then sent to the scheduling office. The bar code then gets scanned into the computer and the computer would then notify management that the task has been completed. By using the bar code system, it allows management to keep track of the production of each article as well as allowing them to know where they are in the process and where the article is located in the store. Whenever furniture is removed, it passes through the computer barcode reader which will read the furniture and record that it is no longer in the shop, thereby deleting it from the list of inventories in the shop automatically. When entering the peak period therefore the management uses the computer records to asses and determines the type of furniture available, and what amount of each type will be needed to add to the inventory already in the shop in order to effectively meet the expected demand. Therefore, the continuous production process will facilitate the batch within this period, thereafter, the season will go down and production will drop to near zero.

The order of 40 mission oak dining room sets the company needs to have a strategic plan. This is a comprehensive process for determining what a business should become and how it can best achieve that goal. First, the production staff needs to find out if all the specifications are the same or different for the dining room sets. Then, how many parts can be obtained from the "white inventory" or from the completed inventory stock. The next stage would be the number of pieces that is needed to assemble the furniture. Finally, start production of additional pieces required through the batching process. Once completion of the tasks and barcodes are removed from the sets and fed into the computer. Then the owner will be informed of the completed order ready for dispatch. Before dispatch, the owner will have to come and inspect the sets just to confirm that they have delivered his/ her requirements, before accepting the oak dinning sets.

The production policy favors a ready sale of the furniture for the company. Aggregate planning is used for services. This type of planning concerns “projected customer demands, equipment capacities and labor capabilities” (Stevenson, 2012, p. 491). Prior to the peak season there is excess production of the furniture that will meet the expected high demand for the products. On the other hand because of the frequent occurrences of accidents and customer unique preferences the company has set aside some incomplete inventory and components to meet. It is possible and incidence of accidents may not appear and this may mean that the company is incurring cost with no return and operating under unutilized capacity hence less profits. Stickley should focus on the current market needs to the latter. This involves going to the extent of carrying out research and innovation that will significantly add to its quality, flexibility and speed competitive advantage.

The company can adopt recent methodologies in manufacturing, like Just-in-Time, which would result in zero inventories. The company would be able to save cost of handling excessive inventory by adopting this technique. Stickley Furniture could also use the TQM process. Total Quality Management (TQM) which consists of continuously improving the business processes and making the production more efficient by making constant changes to the produce. TQM is a set of management practices throughout the organization, geared to ensure the organization consistently meets or exceeds customer requirements. Total quality management places strong focus on process measurement and controls as means of continuous improvement. Quality is important factor to any product. The benefits of quality can command higher premium prices, increase market share, decrease liability, increases customer loyalty, and reduce production problems. The consequences of poor quality can lead to loss of business, liability, productivity issues, and higher costs (Stevenson, 2012). One recommendation that I would recommend, would be the use of oak wood be changed. Oak wood has gotten to be quite expensive and will in turn lead to high expenses and reduced profits. Oak is also becoming scarcer and its unavailability might ruin the company brand product. I think that the company should change its objectives and goals to shift from concentration of production of oak furniture.

In conclusion, Stickley Furniture has been in business since 1900 and has grown in this horrible economy. I believe that it is not only because of the quality of furniture that Stickley has to offer, but because of the employees who are highly skilled and craftsmen, which makes the process and products much more effective. We examined each aspect of job shop process, batch process, and continuous process, as well as other methods used in production optimization in order to understand how these methods benefit the process. I believe that the production policy should be more flexible, to meet the market rather than expecting repairing breakages. The company has always produced quality products. Therefore the allocation of capacities to meet repairs should be reduced further to the probabilities of previous instances of repairs and accidents. I believe that having a TQM program will help to retain or maintain customer interest in face of the growing competitiveness around the globe. For the simple fact that, TQM attempts to continuously improve the quality of products and processes and investigates the factors that can achieve this goal. One can even argue that Stickley production process is continuous, because all the stages above are continuously being undertaken as preparation processes after which they are immediately joint into full furniture. This process involves both the skilled and unskilled workers. The unskilled workers handle the inspection of knots, gluing the pieces and sanding. The skilled workers handle the computerized saw, the curving and drilling of the holes which forms the basis of the design shapes and marketing of the product. I believe that the continuous process just aids in the job shop process. That, Stickley uses all the processes at some point to get whatever job done that they need to have completed at that time. There is nothing wrong with using more than one production process, but Stickley’s primary mode is job shop. Stickley has made it all the way to 2000’s so they have obviously fixed all the areas in which they were lacking or have made plans to revise these areas.

References

Stevenson, W.J. (2012). Operations management (11th Ed). New York, NY: McGraw Hill/Irwin.
Stickley (n.d). Official website of l. & j.g. stickley. Retrieved on Jan. 21, 2013 from http://www.stickley.com/OurStickleyStory.cfm?SubPgName=Main&BodyTxt=On