Olive grove case study
.... The excel spreadsheet will better help plan the schedule of mail clerks of the post office based on historical data which includes average daily mail intake for a given day. In conjunction with the daily intake historical data, we will compare it with a clerk’s historical mail processing rates per hour. The rates per hour are the average number of pieces of mail a clerk can process in one hour. Comparing the two together will give us an idea on how many man-hours is needed to successfully complete the mail intake task for each day. We are performing these tasks with the idea of minimizing cost. The costs are the mail clerk’s wages, which differ depending on their shifts. Data As stated, this particular post office handles approximately 65,000 pieces of mail each day Monday thru Wednesday, 80,000 pieces Thursday thru Friday, and 50,000 pieces on Saturday. The facilities storage utilization is about roughly 20,000 piece of mail per day . To make the operations of the post office run as smoothly as possible, each post office has hourly workers that specialize in a specific tasks to make operations run efficiently. These positions include City Carriers, Mail Handlers, Mark-Up Clerks, and Machine Operators, and Clerks . The scheduling that our group will focus on in our project is with the job of the Clerk. The Clerk’s responsibility is to process incoming and outgoing flat mail in the post office facility using automated equipment to ensure correct sorting and distribution. The processing includes weighing to ensure correct postage requirements and sorting to organize location drop offs The historical data on mail clerks is as follows; On average a mail sorter can sort and process about 5 pieces of mail per minute. This total amounts to the sorting of 300 pieces of mail per hour. In one 6-hour work shift that includes a half-hour break; mail clerks can process approximately 1650 pieces of mail per day. In one 9-hour work shift that includes an hour break; mail clerks can process approximately 2400 pieces of mail per day . There are full-time and part-time shifts available. The wages of the full time shifts are higher due to length of shift and employment classification. The shifts for the day are as follows: SHIFT Status Time Hourly Wage Daily Wage 1 Part-Time 6:00am-12:00pm $10/hr $60/day 2 Full-Time 6:00am-3:00pm $14/hr $122/day 3 Part-Time 12:00pm-6:00pm $10/hr $60/day 4 Full-Time 9:00am-6:00pm $14/hr $122/day 5 Part-Time 9:00am-3:00pm $10/hr $60/day Based on the chart, this particular branch has a 12-hour operation. The problem our group will focus on is correctly scheduling manpower of the Mail Clerks for one-week based minimizing wage cost. We will concentrate on scheduling clerks based on April 7- 12 historical data for example purposes: 7-Apr 8-Apr 9-Apr 10-Apr 11-Apr 12-Apr Historical Mail Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Daily Estimates: 65,000 65,000 65,000 80,000 80,000 50,000 As far as employee restrictions go, part-time employees can work multiple part-time shifts. Part- Time Restrictions and Constraints If you work shift 1, you get Monday off. If you work shift 3, you get Tuesday off. If you work shift 5, you get Wednesday off No days off are given for Thursday and Friday to accommodate the average mail intake increase. Full- Time Restrictions and constraints Each of the full-time shifts, which are Shifts 2, and Shifts 4 get Saturday off. Also there must be a minimum of 6 full time employees scheduled for Shift 2 and shift 4. Full-Time and Part- Time Restrictions and Constraints At least 50% of employees should be scheduled for the hours of 1pm – 5pm, as those are the hours most mail is collected and needs to be sorted. Solution The spreadsheet that our group came up with is a very productive solution. This spreadsheet enables front line supervisors to input the historical mail daily estimates, and solver takes care of the rest of the problem. The final solution to the spreadsheet gives the supervisor the total number of employees he or she needs to schedule in total for each shift to meet the requirements of mail, man power requirements, and constraints. Cell...