David oversees the packing floor for Morning Food Incorporated, a Swiss company producing breakfast cereals for kids. He has an office next to the packing line floor, where he can supervise all 10 packing lines easily. Morning Food Inc. is a small player in the Swiss market, otherwise dominated by multinationals. However, it is well known for its frugal marketing strategies, which include avoiding expensive mainstream media for product promotions. The company introduced a new flavor of kids’ cereals this month, and the marketing team decided to insert a cookie of a famous animated character, “doggo” in parentheses, in each cereal box. The cookie is to be inserted in each box on the packing floor.
Since this is a short term promotion, the addition of doggo is being handled manually. marketing handed over an allotment of 10,000 cookies to be added to the first batch and asked David to coordinate with the cookie vendor or subsequent locks until further notice. David immediately issued 10,000 cookies to the packing floor.
David’s team pegs 1000 cookies each day and David is told that the vendor needs a three day notice before she can deliver the next lot of cookies the cookies need to be transported in such a way that they don’t break during the inbound of outbound transportation. When David received the next consignment of cookies, he found that all the cookies were already broken. He immediately placed an order with a cookie Bender and asked for earliest delivery. However, the vendor informed him that it would take three days to deliver the next batch of cookies.
As David walked into the office today, he received a call from the operations director’s office asking him to meet with the director immediately. David is now dreading a conversation with his difficult boss.
What should have David done differently and is there anything can he do now?
How can short‐term changes to a lean production line be implemented, as described in the case?
Suggest strategies on working with a supplier in this type of situation that go beyond those specified by analytics analysis
What other aspects related to packaging should David consider for the logistics of the cookies?
