California Illini Case Study

CASE: The California-Illini Manufacturing Company's (CI) plant operates in the rural central valley of California. It is family-owned and run. CI's plant manager, a grandson of the founder, went to school with many of the employees. Despite this family atmosphere, CI is the largest producer of plain and hard-faced replacement tillage tools in the United States. It averages annual sales of $13 million. Farmers use tillage tools to cultivate the land. Hard-facing, the application of brazed …

…to maintain in front of each constraint, finding ways to get rid of WIP, implementing a JIT system for ordering raw materials, introduce quality control, and consider tools such as the value chain or ABC/ABM. I would recommend implementing a Theory of Constraint approach for California Illini. Benefits of the TOC approach would be; more effective utilization of scarce human and material resources; lower levels of work-in-process inventory, and better responsiveness to customer needs.