Question

Hospital Copy Office

A hospital's copy office receives orders from managers for articles and other materials to be copied for in-house seminars. When the copy office receives an order, an employee reviews the order and sorts it into two groups: one of materials with copyrights and another of materials without copyrights. Two employees then look in the copy office's storeroom to see if any copyright materials remain from a previous seminar in on-hand inventory; what is not already in storage is ordered. Another employee photocopies the handouts that are not copyright-protected. When the photocopying is complete, the copied handouts are stapled. All materials, both with and without copyrights, are then drilled. Finally, two employees inspect the materials for conformance to specifications. This involves checking the photocopies against the manager's order, inspecting the drilled holes, assuring that the proper pages were stapled together in the correct sequence, collating the assembled articles and other handouts, and placing orders for the copyrighted articles that were not already on hand.

Each task must be performed in the sequence given below. The hospital's copy office operates 8 hours per day.

Task	Employees Assigned	Task Time(minutes)
Review order; sort into materials with and without copyrights	1	15
Look in storeroom for copyright material already in on-hand inventory	2	15
Photocopy handouts without copyright	1	30
Staple handouts photocopied in house	1	10
Drill all on-hand materials	1	20
Inspection and placement of orders for unavailable copyrighted materials	2	45

A. What is the minimum possible throughput time of the order completion process in the copy office?

B. What is the cycle time of the order completion process in the copy office?

C. What is the hourly capacity of the order completion process in the copy office?

D. To bring in extra revenue, the hospital's copy office added a new service in 2016 - direct delivery of external customer orders to customers' workplaces (for a fee). The copy office's delivery record for 2016 showed that 65% of their customers received their completed order in 24 hours, another 25% within 36 hours, and another 10% within 45 hours. What was the copy office's average delivery time for 2016?

E. If each and every task in the order completion process at the copy office except "Review order" and "Look in storeroom" averages five percent scrap, what is the overall yield of completed orders?

F. In 2015, the hospital copy office's planned capacity for photocopying was based on 350 days per year of operation. However, copy machine breakdowns caused the copy office five unplanned days of downtime. What was the copy machine utilization in the hospital's copy office in 2015?

Answer 1

Solution
Task 1	15 minutes	15
Task 2	15 minutes	15
Task 3	30 minutes (parallel with task 2)	15
Task 4	10 minutes	10
Task 5	20 minutes	20
Task 6	45 minutes	45
Throughput time		120 min
Cycle time		Every 45 minutes orders will be delivered
Hourly Capacity		half order per hour
Considering 100 orders completed in year 2016, total time taken for delivery: (65*24)+(25*36)+(10*45)= 2910 for 100 orders
			Average Delivery time= 29.1 hours
			Scraps happens at stage 3/4/5 Yield =1*0.95*0.95*0 Solution Task 1 15 minutes 15 Task 2 15 minutes 15 Task 3 30 minutes (parallel with task 2) 15 Task 4 10 minutes 10 Task 5 20 minutes 20 Task 6 45 minutes 45 Throughput time 120 min Cycle time Every 45 minutes orders will be delivered Hourly Capacity half order per hour Considering 100 orders completed in year 2016, total time taken for delivery: (65*24)+(25*36)+(10*45)= 2910 for 100 orders Average Delivery time= 29.1 hours Scraps happens at stage 3/4/5 Yield =1*0.95*0.95*0.95 Yield of Copy Office=85.75% Office Utilization= Working Days/Planned Working Days =345/350 Utilization= 98.5% .95 Yield of Copy Office=85.75%
			Office Utilization= Working Days/Planned Working Days =345/350 Utilization= 98.5%