Question

A barbershop has been using a level workforce of barbers five days per-week, Tuesday through Saturday. The barbers have considerable idle time on Tuesday through Friday, with certain peak periods during the lunch hours and after 4 p.m. each day. On Friday afternoon and all-day Saturday, all the barbers are very busy, with customers waiting a substantial amount of time and some customers being turned away.

1. Describe at least three options that this barbershop should consider for aggregate planning?
2. How would you analyze these options?
3. What data should be collected, and how should the options be compared?

In 500-750 words, submit this assignment in MS Word

Answer 1

Answer:

The three options that can be used for aggregate planning are as below:

1. Workforce Smoothening: As there are idle labour at some days while at some days there is requirement for more labour, therefore hiring or layoff approach will have to take to serve all the customer if customer flow does not changes.
2. Production Smoothening: Attempt should be made to smoothen the demand and for this there should be some promotional effort or offer should be given during the lean demand period. This will help in reducing the customer load on weekends.
3. Hybrid approach of workforce and production smoothening: As a hybrid approach both the option can be exercised so that the maximum customers can be served and there is almost zero probability to turn down a customer.

Based on the following parameters we will analyse the outcome of the above three options:

2. A. number of customer served per day.

3. B. Number of customer being turned down at any given day

4. C. Amount of time one customer is waiting on an average.

5. Each of these parameter will be assigned weight and the model which scores well on all the parameters or having highest cumulative score will be adopted.