Free «Taylor Incorporated» Essay Sample

Taylor Incorporated is a company that manufactures widgets. Currently, the company faces a challenge to increase its productivity. The number of workers the company is able to hire affects its productivity. Additionally, the compensation claims by the workers after sustaining injuries and the subsequent loss of working hours contributed by the injured who take time off from work to recuperate together with wasted motion (walking) at the assembly line are among the reasons why the company is under-producing. Injured workers must be replaced for the company to sustain an optimum production level. Due to the factors discussed above, Taylor Inc. has to choose between the two proposals that have been put forward (Giltow et al., 2005).

The first proposal number suggests the reduction of wasted motion to 1% of the entire labor. Physical lifting is to be reduced to not more than 12 pounds and only six people to be employed at the assembly line. These changes would increase the amount of goods produced to 392 per eight-hour shift, the reduction in the compensation claims to 3 per year. However, $1.3 million is necessary, and equipment will be in use for 7 years. The second proposal recommends the reduction in wasted motion to 7% of total labor time, the reduction in physical lifting to not more than 23 pounds and only nine people will be required to man the assembly line. This would result in an increase in the number of widgets to 288 per eight-hour shift, the reduction in the worker’s claims to an estimated 1.9 per year (see Table 1). However, the capital investments to implement the proposal would be $967,000 and equipment will serve for 5 years (Bloom et al., 2007).

The first has an edge over the second because it reduces wasted motion by a margin of 6% more than the second proposal. The first proposal also reduces physical lifting to 11 pounds lesser than the second one. The number of goods produced when proposal one is in place is 36 goods per eight-hour shift when compared to proposal two. The number of compensated workers will be less by one in proposal one when compared to proposal two. Proposal one has also the advantage of the useful equipment to be purchased will be in use for 2 more years when compared to proposal number two. However, proposal one has a disadvantage of requiring a larger capital investment of 333,000 pounds more than proposal two. Even though a larger capital investment is required for the implementation of proposal one when compared to proposal two. The outcome of the implementation of proposal one surpass that of proposal two by far (Bloom et al., 2007).