Question

The? three-station work cell illustrated in the figure below has a product that must go through only one of the two machines at station 1? (they are? parallel) before proceeding to station 2. ?HINT:??Take units per hour and change them into the minutes at each station for one unit. Remember at Station One we have twice the resources for a parallel identical process. Station 1 Machine A Station 1 Machine B Station 2 Station 3 Capacity: 20 units/hr Capacity: 20 units/hr Capacity: 15 units/hr Capacity: 10 units/hr x y graph ?a) The bottleneck time of the system is nothing minutes per unit ?(enter your response as a whole? number). ?b) ? Station 1 Station 3 Station 2 is the bottleneck station. ?c) The throughput time is nothing minutes ?(enter your response as a whole? number). ?d) If the firm operates 12 hours per? day, 5 days per? week, the weekly capacity of this work cell is nothing units? (enter your response as a whole? number).

Answer 1

The processing capacity of each of the machine at station 1 = 60 minutes/20 units = 3 minutes

Processing capacity of each of the machine at station 2 = 60minutes/ 15 units = 4 minutes

Processing capacity of each of the machine at station 3 = 60 minutes / 10 units = 6 minutes

However , since parallel processing is done in 2 machines at station 1 , effective processing capacity of station 1 = 3/2 = 1.5 minutes

The bottleneck station is the one which has maximum processing time per unit which in this case is Station 3 with processing time of 6 minutes

1. THE BOTTLENECK TIME OF THE SYSTEM IS = 6 MINUTES PER UNIT
2. STATION 3 IS THE BOTTLENECK OPERATION
3. The throughput time of the system

= Effective processing time of station 1 + processing time of station 2 + processing time of station 3

= 1.5 +4 + 6 minutes

= 11.5 minutes( 12 minutes rounded to next higher whole number )

THROUGHPUT TIME OF THE SYSTEM = 12 MINUTES PER UNIT

1. The capacity of the work cell is determined by capacity of the bottleneck operation and therefore capacity of the work cell = 6 minutes/ unit

Weekly capacity of work cell

= 60 minute/ hour x 12 hours/ day x 5 days/ week

= 3600 minutes

Weekly capacity of the work cell = 3600 minutes / 6 minutes = 600

WEEKLY CAPACITY OF THIS WORK CELL = 600 UNITS