Question

Consider a production process consisting of three resources:

RESOURCES/ PROCESSING TIME (MIN/UNIT) / NUMBERS OF WORKERS

1. (LATHE) - 10 -2

2.(DRILL) - 6-1

3.(WELD) - 16-3

ASSUME THERE IS SUFFICIENT INPUT TO THE PROCESS:

2A. WHAT IS THE CAPACITY OF EACH RESOURCE IN UNITS/HOURS?

60/10*2 = 12 UNITS PER HOUR/ 60/6*1 = 10 UNITS PER HOUR/ 60/16*3 = 11.25 UNITS PER HOUR

2B. WHICH RESOURCE IS THE BOTTLENECK?

RESOURCE 2 IS THE BOTTLENECK AND THE PROCESS CAPACITY IS 10 UNITS PER HOUR

2C. WHAT IS THE FLOW RATE IF THE DEMAND IS 15 UNITS PER HOUR? THERE IS SUFFICIENT INPUT FOR THE PROCESS. (FLOW RATE= MINIMUM(AVAILABLE INPUT, DEMAND RATE, PROCESS CAPACITY)

2D.WHAT IS THE UTILIZATION OF EACH RESOURCE IF DEMAND IS 15 UNITS PER HOUR? RESOURCE UTILIZATION =FLOW RATE / RESOURCE CAPACITY

2E. GIVEN THAT THE DEMAND IS 15 UNITS PER HOUR, WHAT KIND OF PROCESS IS THIS INPUT-CONSTRAINED, DEMAND CONSTRAINED OR CAPACITY CONSTRAINED?

3. IN A CAPACITY-CONSTRAINED PROCESS, WHY ARE WE INTERESTED IN LOCATING THE BOTTLENECK?

Answer 1

The solutions of 2A)and 2b) have been provided in the question itself

2C) Here, we have sufficient input to the processes so it doesn't become a limiting factor in determining the flowrate. Therefore, FLOW RATE = MINIMUM( DEMAND RATE, PROCESS CAPACITY) = MIN(15,10) = 10

2D) UTILIZATION =FLOW RATE / RESOURCE CAPACITY

Therefore Utilization of Lathe

= 10/12 = 0.83 or 83.3%

Therefore Utilization of Drill

= 10/10 =1 or 100%

Therefore Utilization of Weld

= 10/11.25 = .889 or 88.9%

As demand is greater than the Resource Capacity and the inputs are sufficiently available, the constraint lies in the Capacity of Drill which is 10 (lesser than demand). Hence the process is capacity-constrained

We are interested in finding out the bottle-neck in a capacity-constrained resource so that we utilize the resource more efficiently and can put any process improvement measures in our bottlenecks. For example, since we know that Drill is the bottleneck here, we can put a quality check before Drill so that we ensure that B processes only products of quality get processes through Drill and these there are no wastages from Drill because of any predecessors or materials

Another thing we should ensure that the total time taken before enforcing any pre-processing operations before Drill should not, at any cost, try to starve the bottleneck otherwise, it may lead to further reduced processing