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UVA-OM-0834
H. R. Anna Company

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UVA-OM-0834

H. R. ANNA COMPANY
The H. R. Anna Company manufactures a variety of fabricated metal house accessories,
including mailboxes and window boxes. They manufacture window boxes in five basic colors in a
small plant in northern Pennsylvania. They make each window box from three pieces: a base (one
part A) and two sides (two part Bs) as shown below:

Completed Window Box

Part A
Part B

This case was prepared by Elliott N. Weiss, Associate Professor of Business Administration. Copyright 1996 by the
University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved. To order copies, send an email to sales@dardenpublishing.com. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used
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UVA-OM-0834

The manufacturing process consists of three basic operations: stamping, painting, and assembly, as
shown below:

Stamping

Painting

Inventory

Assembly

Inventory

Process Description
Stamping
The parts are fabricated by a single stamping machine; switching between the two part types,
however, requires a setup time of 120 minutes. Once the machine is set up, the run time for each
part A is one minute while the run time for each part B is only 30 seconds. Currently, the stamping
machine rotates its production between one batch of 360 for part A and one batch of 720 for part B.
Completed parts move from the stamping machine to the painting station.
Painting
At the painting station, a robot paints the parts in one of five colors. The robot takes 30
seconds to paint one part A and 10 seconds to paint one part B. The robot can easily switch between
painting the two parts, but a switch in color does require 20 minutes for setup. Once a piece is
painted, it must wait 120 minutes to dry before moving to assembly. The painting robot is currently
programmed to change color every time it finishes 360 component sets (i.e., 360 of part A and 720
of part B).
Assembly
Workers then manually assemble parts of the same color to form the finished product. One
base (part A) and two sides (two part Bs), and several small purchased components are required for
each unit of a final product. It takes 27 minutes to assemble a single unit.