1. Evaluate the changes Dore-Dore has made in its children's knitwear division.

How
does the performance of the traditional operations and the cellular manufacturing
system differ? For example, how does work-in-process inventory change when cells are
implemented?
Traditional Operations: Under traditional operations, Dor-Dors production batch size in
sewing, on average, was 200 pieces of the same style and color, with an average of eight different
sizes within a batch. The knitwear sewing contained 55 sewing machines installed and was
staffed by 42 workers (Exhibit 7). The additional machines were either specialty machines used
for occasional operations or extra machines used in periods of peak demand. The sewing
machine operators worked eight hours per day, five days per week. Sewing an average knitwear
garment took 10 minutes of actual labor.
Cellular Manufacturing: Cellular manufacturing significantly reduced many types of waste
present in the traditional sewing process and resulted in delivery time falling from 15 days to 1
day. Given a flow rate of 2,000 garments per day work-in-progress fell from 30,000 to 2,000
units, improving annual work-in-process turns from 16X to 240X. According to Exhibit 4, the
work-in-progress inventory fell by an estimated 1.23FF million and holding costs by 275,000FF .
Comparison: The grid layout by machine type of the traditional system took no account of
garment dependent workflow variability and resulted in the unnecessary movement of inventory.
By contrast the garment-specific cell design reduced product movement and cross-trained
operators who could switch tasks, which helped balance work-flow (Exhibit 6).

2. What changes are required to ensure successful implementation of cellular manufacturing? Is

worker cross-training necessary?

Reorganization: The knitwear factory was currently organized by machine typ. For example, all button
hole machines were located in one area. Batches of partially-completed product were moved in
wheeled bins by floor supervisors or material handlers to the next required operation.
Crisis Management: If a machine in a cell broke down, it would have to be quickly repaired or replaced;
if possible, during the repair period, the worker would move to another machine within the cell to
continue working. Encouraged to act autonomously with regard to work methods, the workers
rearranged the cell in a new one evening after management and other workers had gone home.
Cross-Training: At first, the team tried to assign work using traditional methods, with each worker
specializing by task. This system made the sweatshirts well but was difficult to adapt to the next style
assigned to the cell.
Operation Layout: The cellular manufacturing system changed the entire layout of the operation as the
placement of machines, workers, and batch flow had originally been designed by ITF in a horseshoe
shape. The cell workers soon found this cumbersome for two reasons: first, the horseshoe worked best
if the production flow was unidirectional, whereas in the Dor-Dor cell, items were frequently passed
back to a previous machine for additional operations or rework; and second, the workers wanted to be
able to face each other to facilitate communication.
Conflict Resolution: Another traditional supervisory role was the resolution of relationship problems
between workers. In view of the autonomous nature of the teams, workers were provided training in
solving these types of problems. Conflicts were to be addressed first within the cell. For the first
experimental cell, ITF unwittingly chose two workers who were ardent enemies. DD decided to go ahead
with the chosen six members, but soon discovered that the two had difficulty working together. On its
own, the team decided to address the problem.

3. What is Dore-Dore's motivation for converting to cells? Should the company continue
with its plans for complete implementation of cells in children's knitwear? If not, which
knitwear products (if any) should be manufactured in cells?
Autonomy of Workers: A key principle underlying the cell concept was that the groups were
autonomous, managing their own time, distribution of work, and work-flow. In contrast, in a
traditional batch production system such as that currently used by DD, each worker repeatedly
performed a single, specific task on each garment in a large batch of identical items, thereby
developing an expertise and a rhythm that fostered high levels of speed, productivity, and
product uniformity (see Exhibit 18).
Loyalty of Workers: Teams remained together unless someone left the factory. When a worker
was absent, the rate of output dropped. If the absence was long, the group could decide whether
it would accept an outside volunteer. In the first cell, when one team member went on maternity
leave, the five remaining members decided not to replace her, as she had promised to return.
Emphasizing the tremendous rise in loyalty by cell members, Marguet noted that the worker had
curtailed the length of her maternity leave to return to the cell.
Reduction in Delivery Time: The average sewing throughput time of a garment dropped from
15 working days to 1 working day by converting sewing department setup from traditional to
cellular.

WIP Reduction: Work-in progress was reduced from 720 to 48 by converting from traditional
to cellular setup. Additionally, there was reduced idle time and hence an increase in labor
utilization as well as machine utilization.

4. Should Dore Dore implement cells in its hosiery production area? If so, would you
suggest the changes to the cell design as currently proposed by M. Enfert? If not, what
alternative approaches could Dore-Dore take to address the concerns M. Marguet raises
in the case?
The implementation of cells in hosiery production would be far more complicated than in
knitting production. The production of hosiery requires four distinct operations, not all of which
are compatible with the cell design. However, considering that only three out of four of the
processes are compatible with the cell model, in addition to other reasons, I would not
recommend the adoption of M. Enferts plan. If Enfert is correct, manufacturing throughput
time will fall to one week and finished goods hosiery inventory would drop 30-40%, however,
this improvement is marginal (and possibly incorrect) considering the potential losses sustained
through the use of the cell system. Additionally, one key consideration is budget limitations:
designing the cell was that ironing required an expensive (350,000-800,000FF per machine),
high-capacity, extremely specialized machine. We do not have much information regarding the
companys budget. My other concern is that Enfert believes the teams should not be completely
cross-trained. By not implementing cross-training, the hosiery department would not reap the
benefits outlined in Question 3: autonomy of workers, loyalty of workers, loyalty of workers,
reduction in delivery time, and work-in-progress reduction. Coming from a more practical
standpoint, it would simply be too difficult to implement this system, which would operate
differently than the cell system in the knitting department, to two separate divisions of the
company at once. If Enferts plan is to be tested, it should be tested well after the
implementation of the cell system in the knitting operation, which will serve as a trial to its
effectiveness.