National Cranberry Cooperative

1. Briefly summarize major trends in the cranberry industry in 1996. What are the problems facing
receiving plant #1 (RP1)?

Major trends in the cranberry industry in 1996 are that the barrels per acre harvested has been
increasing at a very constant rate from 69.6 in 1990 to now 95.1 in 1996. This means that there are
many more cranberries being produced but demand of cranberries is not increasing rapidly enough to
match this increase in supply. As a result, in 1995 the cranberry growers employed the Agriculture
Marketing Agreement Act and agreed that 10% of all cranberries grown should be set aside. Lastly,
there is a major trend of increasing mechanization in harvesting cranberries. Specifically, the water
harvesting method has increased the yield by up to 20% compared to the previous method of
harvesting, dry harvesting. However, water harvesting shortens the time that harvested fruit could be
held prior to either its use or freezing for long term storage. This means that the cranberries must
rapidly go from being picked to being frozen or consumed.

Problems facing Receiving Plant #1 (RP1) are several. First, the plant bought a 5th Kiwanee dumper for
$200,000. The problem is that overtime costs are still very high. Also, cranberry growers are upset that
their trucks spend so much time waiting to unload process fruit into the receiving plant. That wasted
time is costing them money. Lastly, that percentage of water harvested cranberries is increasing from
58% to 70% which means RP1 will have to make some changes to accommodate this fact.
2. Draw a flowchart for the current process for handling process fruit at RP1, starting from temporary
holding bins and ending after the separators (i.e. ignore the berry dumping, truck weighing, and berry
grading activities before that, and bagging and bulking process after that. These activities are never a
bottleneck). Draw one flowchart only which shows the flow for both dry and wet berries. Mark the
capacity in barrels per hour of each process activity.

Dry Cranberry path Wet Cranberry path

Bin 1-16 Dry

Destoning (Dry only)
Size: 250 bbls ea
1500 bbls per hour x 3 machines
4000 bbls total
=4500 bbls/hour

Bin 17-24 Dry or Wet

Size: 250 bbls ea
2000 bbls total Dechaffing (Wet Only)
1500 bbls per hour x 2
Bin 25-27 Wet Dechaffing (Dry Only)
machines = 3000 bbls/hour
Size: 400 bbls ea 1500 bbls per hr x 1 machines
1200 bbls total = 1500 bbls/hour

Drying (Wet Only)

1500 bbls per hour x 2
Activity: Available Capacity machines = 3000 bbls/hour
Wet storage 1200 bbls
Wet or Dry Storage 2000 bbls
Dry storage 4000 bbls
Dryers 600 bbls/hr
Separators
Destoning 4500 bbls/hr
400 bbls per hour x 3
Dechaffer Wet 3000 bbls/hr
machines = 1200 bbls/hour
Dechaffer Dry 1500 bbls/hr
Separators 1200 bbls/hr
 3. What is the throughput rate (or capacity per hour) of the system measured in terms of the
system input (i.e. cranberries delivered to the plant)? Where is the bottleneck?

Destoning = 4500 / .30 = 15000 incoming bbls/hr

Dry dechaffing = 1500/ .30 = 5000 incoming bbls/hr
Wet dechaffing = 3000 / .70 = 4285.71 incoming bbls/hr
Wet drying = 3000 / .70 = 4285.71 incoming bbls/hr
Separators = 1200/1 = 1200 incoming bbls/hr

The bottleneck is in the separators, they can only handle 1200 incoming bbls of cranberries per hour.

4. Assuming that on a peak day, the plant receives 20,000 bbls of process berries, how long will the
processing be completed? how long will a truck carrying wet berries have to wait on average before the
berries can be unloaded?

5. Do the same analysis as in Question 4 for a busy day when the plant receives 16,000 bbls of berries,
and for a normal day when the plant receives 10,000 bbls of berries.

6. In the current system, on a peak day, it takes a long time to complete berry processing, and a large
percentage of trucks carrying wet berries have to wait. Discuss options that can reduce processing
completion time and options that can reduce or even eliminate truck waiting time.