| Course | BU 421 Operations Management |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 6 |
| Paper type | Waste reduction proposal |
| Length | About 910 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Business Management |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 421 Unit 6
Stop Walking to the Hardware Crib and Stop Boring Hinges by Hand: A Waste Reduction Proposal for a Composite Cabinet Plant's Box Assembly Cell
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 421: Operations Management
Instructor Name
March 25, 2026
Stop Walking to the Hardware Crib and Stop Boring Hinges by Hand: A Waste Reduction Proposal for a Composite Cabinet Plant's Box Assembly Cell
The Cell Today
The box assembly cell at Tallgrass Cabinet Works, the course's invented Omaha cabinet plant, turns cut and edgebanded parts into finished cabinet boxes with doors hung. Six assemblers per shift take parts from carts, join the case with dowels and glue, clamp it, fit drawer slides and shelf pins, then pass the box to packing, where hinge cups are bored in each door and the door is hung. The cell builds about 100 boxes a shift, so each box takes about 28.8 minutes of assembler time: six people times 480 minutes, divided by 100. The process flow work in Unit 2 mapped the door line; this proposal looks only at the cell and its packing station. Observations come from two shifts of video and a walking study in March 2026 and belong to the composite case.
The Waste Register
Ohno (1988) grouped waste into seven kinds: overproduction, waiting, transport, overprocessing, inventory, unnecessary motion and defects. The register lists only the kinds the cell actually shows, with the evidence for calling each one waste and an estimate of what it consumes.
| Kind | Where it was seen | Evidence | Time consumed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Motion | Assemblers walking to the central hardware crib for slides, pins and hinges | Walking study: about 3,400 feet per assembler per shift; 22 crib trips each | About 1.6 minutes per box |
| Waiting | Two stations sharing one case clamp | Video: assembler idle while the other station's case is clamped | About 0.9 minutes per box |
| Defects | Hand boring of hinge cups at packing | 3.5% of doors mis-bored and plugged and re-drilled, about 12 minutes each | About 0.42 minutes per door averaged over all doors |
| Inventory | Parts carts queued at the cell entrance | Cart count: about 1.5 days of parts waiting | No labor time; ties up floor space and hides damage |
| Transport | Doors carried from finishing to door storage to packing | Unit 2 map: 320 feet after finishing | Handled by material staff, not assemblers |
Proposal 1: Hardware at the Point of Use
The largest waste in assembler time is walking. Every box needs drawer slides, shelf pins and a hinge set, and all of them are kept in a single crib at the far end of the cell. The proposal is to place a small flow rack at each of the six stations holding every hardware item that station uses, run as a two-bin system: when the front bin empties, the assembler slides it to the back of the rack and starts on the full one behind it, and the empty bin is the signal for a material handler to refill it from the crib.
Physically, the assembler's sequence drops from nine steps to seven: the walk to the crib and the walk back disappear. The walking study suggests this returns about 1.6 minutes per box, or 160 minutes a shift across the cell. Refilling bins will take the material handler about 20 minutes a shift, so the net return is about 140 minutes a shift. The change costs about $3,600 for six flow racks, $400 for bins and labels and about 16 hours of setup and training at $28 an hour, $448, for a total of about $4,450. Output during the switch should not suffer, since racks can be installed one station at a time between shifts.
Proposal 2: A Boring Machine for Hinge Cups
The packing station bores each door's two hinge cups by hand at a drill press, marking positions with a tape measure and a square. It takes about 2.1 minutes a door, and 3.5 percent of doors are bored in the wrong place and must be plugged and re-drilled, about 12 minutes each. The proposal is to replace the drill press with a hinge boring machine that has fixed fences and stops for each door height, so the operator sets the door against the stops and bores both cups in one stroke.
With the machine, boring takes about 0.6 minutes a door and mis-bores should fall close to zero, because the stops remove the measuring step where errors occur. The saving is 1.5 minutes of boring plus about 0.42 minutes of average rework, or about 1.92 minutes a door, which is 192 minutes a shift at 100 doors. The machine costs about $8,500, training two operators takes eight hours each, $448, and moving power and dust collection costs about $600, for a total of about $9,550. The switch would take one shift, and the old drill press would stay in place as a backup for two months.
What the Changes Are Worth, Honestly Stated
Together, the proposals return about 332 minutes a shift, or about 2,770 assembler hours a year over 500 shifts. At $28 an hour that is about $77,500 a year, and the combined cost of about $14,000 would be recovered in roughly ten weeks. But the saving is time, not cash, unless the time is used. The honest claim is that the returned hours let the cell absorb growth without hiring: the capacity worksheet found the cell about 4 percent short of the hours 2027 will need, and 2,770 returned hours would turn that shortfall into a cushion of about 9 percent. Womack and Jones (2003) warn that improvements which free people without a plan for their time tend to be reversed, so the proposal ties the returned hours to the 2027 volume increase rather than to headcount cuts.
How the Result Will Be Confirmed
Three measures are defined now, before any change, so the result cannot be chosen after the fact. Assembler minutes per box, now 28.8, are expected to fall to about 25.5. First-pass yield at door hanging, now 96.5 percent, is expected to rise above 99.5 percent. Walking distance per assembler per shift, now about 3,400 feet, is expected to fall below 1,000 feet. Each will be measured for four weeks after the changes, using the same video and walking study method as the baseline. Liker (2004) describes this practice of standardizing the new method and measuring against the old as what keeps a gain in place. The plant, the cell, its six assemblers and the times recorded are all invented for this course.
References
Liker, J. K. (2004). The Toyota way: 14 management principles from the world's greatest manufacturer. McGraw-Hill.
Ohno, T. (1988). Toyota production system: Beyond large-scale production. Productivity Press.
Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2003). Lean thinking: Banish waste and create wealth in your corporation (Rev. ed.). Free Press.
What the BU 421 Unit 6 instructions ask for
For Unit 6, BU 421 asks students to identify waste in a process and propose ways to reduce it. Most versions refer to the seven or eight wastes of lean production, such as transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, defects and unused talent, and expect the student to find specific instances rather than list the categories. Typical requirements include a description of the current process, evidence of each waste with some measure of its size, proposed changes with their costs, the expected benefit, and a way to confirm the result. Plan for roughly three or four pages in APA 7 format. The process may be manufacturing or service, and earlier course work on the same process makes the proposal stronger because the baseline already exists.
Inside the BU 421 Unit 6 example
The sample describes the assembly cell first, with crew size, output and assembler minutes per box calculated from observed figures. A waste register then lists each waste the team observed, its category, how it was measured and how many minutes it costs per shift. Two proposals follow, each with its mechanism, its cost and the minutes it returns: moving hardware to the benches ends the walks to the crib, and a boring machine ends hand drilling and the defects it causes. A value section converts the returned time into money but says clearly that the saving becomes cash only if the time absorbs growth that would otherwise need new hires. The confirmation section sets three measures with baselines and targets before any change is made.
Reading the BU 421 Unit 6 rubric
Grading for the waste reduction unit usually covers identification of waste, evidence and measurement, proposed solutions, expected benefits and a plan to verify results, along with presentation and sources. Identification earns points when each waste is observed in the process and assigned the right category. Evidence scores highest with a measured baseline in minutes, feet or defects rather than impressions. Solutions are judged on whether they remove the cause, not just the symptom. Benefits earn full credit when they are costed honestly, including the difference between freed time and cash saved. Verification is the criterion most often left thin: measures chosen and baselined before the change, with a stated period of observation, are what the top level asks for.
BU 421 Unit 6 help: mistakes that cost points
Many waste proposals lose points by listing the lean categories and giving a textbook example of each, instead of observed instances in the chosen process. Another common gap is an unmeasured baseline, which makes any later improvement impossible to show. Students often claim labor savings as cash when the workers will stay on payroll, a claim instructors question. Some proposals fix a symptom, such as adding a second parts cart, while the cause, parts stored far from the work, remains. Others skip the verification plan or define success after the change is made. Finally, costs of the proposals belong in the paper; a solution with no price, set against a saving stated in dollars, leaves the payback question unanswered for the reader.
Get a BU 421 Unit 6 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 6 instructions with the rubric from your BU 421 classroom, plus the process or case the assignment names. We write a custom example that keeps the current state short, attaches every waste entry to a step with evidence, costs two changes fully and defines the measures first. First custom sample free, returned in 24 to 48 hours.
More BU 421 papers and business management samples
- BU 421 Unit 1: Competitive priorities brief
- BU 421 Unit 2: Process flow documentation
- BU 421 Unit 3: Capacity planning worksheet
- BU 421 Unit 4: Demand planning record
- BU 421 Unit 5: Inventory policy write-up
- BU 421 Unit 7: Quality control chart record
- BU 421 Unit 8: Supply chain scheduling file
- BU 302 Unit 6: Influence tactic comparison
- BU 321 Unit 6: Two sample comparison paper
- BU 380 Unit 6: Strategic commitment paper
- BU 106 Unit 6: Finance fundamentals exercise
BU 421 Unit 6 questions, answered
Does the process have to be manufacturing?
No, and a service process often reads better because the waiting is so visible. Order handling, claims processing, appointment booking in a service office and warehouse picking all carry the same categories once you look for them. Keep the unit of analysis clear, since a service process handling several request types at once can hide where the delay actually sits.
How do I estimate a saving honestly?
Work from the times already in your map, state the arithmetic, and round the answer to the precision your inputs deserve. Saying a change removes roughly two handling steps worth a stated number of minutes per unit is defensible. Claiming an exact annual figure from estimated step times is not, and a marker reading carefully will notice the gap.
Is one waste category enough for the proposal?
If it is genuinely the one the process shows, yes, and depth on it usually scores better than a thin pass across all of them. Check the instructions first, since some sections require the full set to be considered even where several come back empty. Where a category does not apply, saying you looked and found nothing is a legitimate entry.
Where can I find a free BU 421 Unit 6 sample paper?
A complete BU 421 Unit 6 waste reduction proposal appears on this page for free, with its waste register, both costed changes and margin notes. If your process is different, such as an office or a clinic, send the instructions and a free custom proposal follows, usually within two days.
Can BU 421 Unit 6 claim labor savings as money saved?
Only with care. The sample converts returned assembler hours into dollars, then states that the value becomes cash only if the time replaces hiring. That distinction is what instructors look for, since freed time with no use saves nothing.