Business

SCENARIO

Maruchek's makeshift manufacturing facility has three departments: shaping, pickling, and packing. Maruchek's orders average 100 pieces per order.Each of the three shaping machines requires 1 hour to set up and can run one piece per minute. The pickling department lowers baskets into brine tanks and subjects them to low-voltage current, heating and cooling, and a rinse. The whole process takes four hours for any number of baskets or pieces. One brine tank is available, and it is capable of processing four baskets at one time. Each basket can hold 50 pieces. Baskets are loaded while a load is being processed in the tank.Each piece is inspected and wrapped in bubble pack in the packing department. Each of the four people in the department can do this at the rate of 25 pieces per hour.Maruchek has heard of optimized production technology (OPT) and wants to identify the bottleneck in his department. Assume you have enough labour to set up all of the shaping machines at the same time.

METHODOLOGY:

First find setup/waiting time of each department. The throughput of each department to be calculated. The department with lowest throughput will have maximum inventory pile-up and is the bottle neck for the entire process.

Shaping department

It has 3 machines with processing time of 1 unit per minute. Setup time is hour.

Batch size= 100 units so processing time is 100 minutes or 100/60 hours.

So throughput of 1 machine for a single batch = Products processed/ (setup time + processing time)

= 100/ (1+1.667) = 37.5 units per hour.

The throughput of entire department considering 3 machines working simultaneously = 112.5 units per hour

pickling department

It has 1 brine tankwith 4 baskets. Capacity 200 units in 4 hours.

So throughput of brine tank= 200/ 4 = 50 units per hour.

Packing department

It has 4 people with throughput of 25 units per hour.

So throughput of entire department for a single batch...