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Arizona State University *
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300
Subject
Industrial Engineering
Date
Apr 3, 2024
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docx
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3
Uploaded by furymills
Concept Check #1: Process and Capacity Analysis
Jeff runs an IT services company that, in addition to more complex projects, develops solutions for simple client website needs. Three teams are dedicated to these simple solutions, while a separate group handles the more complex projects. This assignment applies only to the simple projects.
Each project must undergo a sequence of three separate activities before completion. That is, a project first passes through Activity 1, then Activity 2, and finally Activity 3. Each activity has a team of a fixed number of workers (given below). For example, if there are four workers assigned to the team that performs Activity 1, then
these four workers only perform Activity 1. A project only needs to be processed by one worker at an activity; therefore, different projects can be processed simultaneously by different workers in the team assigned to the same activity. Each activity has an associated processing time (given below). For example, it takes one worker 18 minutes to perform Activity 1 for a project. Ignore startup and shutdown effects in answering the questions below. Projects arrive at an average rate of 8.2 per
hour. (This is the demand rate.)
Note the following definitions from class (or in addition to those provided in class).
Process capacity
= bottleneck capacity
Process flow rate (or “Flow rate”)
= minimum of demand rate and process capacity
Utilization of stage n
= Flow rate / Capacity of stage n
Note: (Because we are dealing with long run averages, you should keep one or two decimal places your answers. In other words, do not round to the nearest integer.)
Activity
Processing time (minutes/project)
Number of workers in the team
1
18
3
2
14
2
3
20
4
1)
What is the capacity of each team, measured in projects per hour? Team 1: 10
Team 2: 8.6
Team 3: 12
Concept Check #1: Process Analysis
2)
Which team is the bottleneck?
Team 2 because they have the lowest capacity.
What is the capacity of the facility in projects per hour?
8.6 is the capacity of the whole process.
3)
What is the flow rate of the facility, and what are the utilizations of each team?
Flow rate of the facility is 8.2. -
Team 1 Utilization: 82%
-
Team 2 Utilization 96%
-
Team 3 Utilization 68%
4)
If they hired an additional worker for Team 1, what would be the capacity of the facility? What explains this result?
Capacity would not change. This is because Team 1 is not the bottleneck.
5)
What would the utilizations of each team be in this case? Provide a brief explanation of your result. Team 1 Utilization: 62%
Team 2 Utilization 96%
Team 3 Utilization 68% Team 1 reduces utilization because the additional worker was not the reason that utilization was not at capacity. 6)
If they hired an additional worker for Team 2, but kept Team 1 at the original number of workers, what would be the capacity of the facility? What explains this result?
The entire capacity of the facility changes to 10. This is because with the additional member Team 1 becomes the bottleneck.
7)
Use the number of workers in Question 7. If the demand rate increased to 13 projects per hour, what would be the flow rate of the facility, and the utilizations of each team? Flow rate changes to 10.
Utilization -
Team 1: 100%, 2
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