H. C. Stark Inc. Case

1. Why are the lead times so long? H. C. Stark Inc. invested in the SAP R/3 Enterprise Resource Planning software for the company but, only the finance dept. uses the software while the production, scheduling, shop floor scheduling and raw material orders and are still processed manually. These departments still believe in using the paper method of processing the transmittal of the sales orders from customers to the operations department. This process is longer than incorporating the software to accomplish the same tasks. Starck doesn't make full use of the functions in SAP R/3. In fact, schedule misses were mostly due to equipment failure. Mike from the sales dept stated there was an "informational black hole" where orders go to the mill, but the demand data doesn’t seem to make it back upstream to the melt shop. Production is a 3 step process where scheduling needs to be on point for the final product to be ready and the next batch in line.
The sales department enters the customer order date into SAP because the software require it. Sometimes the Sales dept. estimates the order date which can cause inaccurate times that are too far out and then the order is ignored by Operations. 2. How might Starck reduce or affect the lead times? Starck will have to implement the use of SAP software for scheduling, production planning, and more accurate data collection for forecasting to save lead time and resources. The availability of informative data can be aggregated and implemented into the departments so they all can cohesively work together to being lead times down. The staff will have to be trained properly on how to effectively use the software to reduce incorrect information and reduce the amount of mistakes entered into the system. "A plant's internal lead time should always be zero. Adding any lead to any level in