Home-Style Cookie Case Study the Case Study

Home-Style Cookie Case Study

The case study entitled "Home-Style Cookies" presents a comprehensive analysis examining the operations of the Lew-Mark Baking Company, a small firm based in western New York State. Every aspect of the company's organizational structure is studied, including inventory, quality guidelines, and the production process used to create each cookie. The production process is explained in great detail, beginning with the use of a pair of continuously operating band ovens which is known as the batch processing system. After management receives an order from its array of distributors, a master list is used to organize the daily baking schedule through the use of a computer program. Based upon the recipes needed for that particular day, the computer will automatically determine the ingredients necessary and add them in precisely the correct amounts. Conveyor belts and stamping presses cut the dough into shapes and move the cookie along the band oven, before they are cooled and packaged for distribution. The process proscribes that each cookie is cut diagonally, because this method creates a product which requires less packaging space. Overall productivity was also increased when the company "increased the length of each oven by 25 feet, which also increased the rate of production" (Stevenson, 2011).

Despite having already automated most of their production process, Lew-Mark Baking Company has elected to leave the packaging of cookies to manual workers. This decision is correct based on two reasons: first, the family-run company is likely the financial heart of the small town in which it resides, and maintaining loyalty to over 200 blue-collar workers should be viewed as a moral obligation. In a purely fiscal sense, this decision is also the most prudent because "the bakery prides itself on the quality of its cookies and quality control inspector samples cookies randomly as they come off the line to assure that their taste and consistency are satisfactory, and that they have been baked to the proper degree" (Stevenson, 2011). In order to uphold this established tradition of baking extremely high-quality cookies, free of the production defects inherent to automated packaging systems, the company should maintain its blue-collar workforce.

The company has also decided to buck industry trends and abstain from utilizing artificial preservatives in their cookies, a choice which necessitates carrying a limited inventory of their edible items. The benefits of this policy are an increased market share of the healthy-food crowd, as well as an increased ability to adjust the production process on the fly. As a consumer evaluating cookies for purchase in a supermarket, I typically try and determine which brands use the fewest artificial ingredients and preservatives. Of course price is always a factor, but because baked goods are meant to be consumed soon after being prepared, I find that the extremely expedient process used by Lew-Mark Baking Company to be preferable.