Paper Hat Production - 2B

2B tried to find out which production method is best for producing as many paper hats as possible in 15 minutes. The production process consisted of 8 single steps.

JOB PRODUCTION:

Each hat was made individually and had to be finished before the next one was started.

Each of the eight very keen workers tried to produce as many hats as possible by him- or herself.

And ... they definitely had lots of fun.

although ... some had to fight really hard to turn the newspaper into a hat.

FLOW PRODUCTION:

This group of eight worked in an assemly line. Each student had to carry out one single step only

...over and over ...and over and over again.

It took the group members quite some time to stick to the rules of line production and be efficient.

BATCH PRODUCTION:

This group had been divided into two subgroups of four members each.

Group1 had to carry out the first four steps and group2 the remaining four to finish the hats.

The groups had to organise themselves and experienced that they had to find place for their piles of not-yet finshed hats, that they had to cope with the traffic between the subgroups and that there was quite some waiting time for group2 before the whole process got going.

The lady in pink was responsible for the quality management and threw away any hat that did not meet her expectations.

and although the quality control was very strict the results were great.

We had expected them to work hard, to produce loads. 

We had expected them to deliver perfect paper hats.

And they did...

32 hats were produced in job production,

35 hats were produced in line production and

31 hats were produced in batch production ... in only 15 minutes!

This result makes it is very hard to decide which of the production types one should choose.