“National Cranberry Cooperative, 1996.”

The website for case is given below. Please copy and paste the link below into your web browser and buy the
case ($6.95).

http://hbr.org/product/national-cranberry-cooperative-1996/an/688122-PDF-ENG?Ntt=national%2520cranberry%2520co

operative%25201996

The case is 10 pages long, was published on May 31, 1988 and the product number is 688-122-PDF-ENG. The author
is Roy D. Shapiro. Please make sure you have the right version of the case.

A common pitfall in analyzing the case is to become mired in too much detail, so be careful to maintain the
big picture while addressing the questions. For the purposes of your analysis, you may make the following
assumptions:
• The Flow Time of the National Cranberry process (starting after the holding bins) is 1 hour (i.e., it
takes 1 hour for a cranberry to flow through the plant).
• During a high-volume period the dryer operator can start at whatever time you choose, rather than 11
AM as shown in Figure E,
• The amount of inventory other than in the bins is negligible.
1. What are the problems facing receiving plant No. 1 (RP1)?
2. Draw a Process Flow Diagram of the cranberry process beginning with Receiving and ending with the
Bailey Mills (i.e., ignore Sorting and Shipping at the end of the process).
3. Compute the Capacity in barrels per hour of each process step.
4. Consider a peak harvest day (18,000 barrels of berries unloaded with 70% of them wet harvested).
Assume that trucks arrive uniformly over a period of 12 hours. Identify the Bottleneck of the process.
5. When would processing be completed on a peak day?
6. When would the last truck unload and how long would it have waited?
7. If you were Hugh Schaeffer, what changes would you make to improve performance of the process?
Estimate the magnitude of the costs and benefits of these changes.