Assignment Background: You are the principal engineer for a new automotive company, Hahiran Luxury. Hahiran Luxury plans to specialize in extreme luxury electric vehicles. No one thought it was possible to have this combination of horsepower and battery life, but your team made it happen. Now you just must produce enough to meet demand. You require the interior of the vehicle to match the level of luxury using hand crafted leather. This level of luxury comes at a cost! Your company plans to sell the first iteration of this car for $1.2 MM (million).
You have identified some key details of taking this dream car from prototype to market. They are as follows:
To make this vehicle, you require several components: frame/suspension, body, engine/battery/electrical, interior (think seats, flooring, dash), and accessories (think everything from tires to bedazzled interior control buttons and paint). Hint: there is a reason they were broken into these categories.
The engine/battery is the most complex component. It has parts sourced from all over the globe which take, on average, one week to source. Once the parts arrive, it takes 24 hours of continuous labor to put together. Once completed, the electrical wiring into the car takes another 24 hours of continuous labor.
The frame/suspension raw material is sourced locally and available on demand. It is entirely autonomously designed and takes 3 hours for the robot to weld and assemble.
The interior has leather sourced from Italy (which takes 2-5 days to source, unless overnighted for $10,000 a freight with enough leather for two vehicles). A team of highly specialized leather crafters (4 available total) work only 4 hours a day and it takes about 16 hours of labor to design and install the interior.
You have all potential specialty accessories pre-ordered and available in your facility. Orders require 1 hour of labor for each added accessory. All vehicles must be painted and have custom tires put on.
Questions:
Part A) How much should you charge a customer for a rush order? How quickly could you promise the vehicle to the customer? What is the limiting rate in production? What strategies would you employ to ensure that you could achieve a rush order in 3 days?
Part B) How would you move your accessories from storage to the production area? Describe at least two alternative methods