Flow Diagram

Rockness Recycling refurbishes rundown business students. The process uses a moving belt, which carries each student through the five-step process in sequence. The steps are as follows:

Step Description Time Required per Student
1 Unpack and place on belt 1.0 minutes
2 Remove off bad habits 1.0 minutes
3 Scrub and clean mind 0.8 minutes
4 Insert modern methods 1.5 minutes
5 Polish and pack 1.2 minutes
6 Inspection 0.8 minutes
10% failure - all failures leave the system
7 Shipping 0.5 minutes

One faculty member is assigned to each of these steps. Each of the faculty members works a 40-hour week, 8 hour per day for 5 days. Once a student finishes the first process and proceeds to the next step. The next student may start into the process.

a. Draw the basic process flow diagram - make sure to indicate where inventory queues occur in the process (use the inventory symbol where appropriate).

b. State which operation is the bottleneck.

c. What is the current systems capacity (under steady state conditions)? Assume: One faculty member is assigned to each of these steps and they work 40 hours per week, 8 hour per day for 5 days.

d. Mr. Rockness has been working on a contract with General Eclectic, which require the delivery of 2,000 refurbished students per week. A representative of the Human Resource from General Eclectic department has just called to complain that the company has been receiving less than 2000 students per week which was the agreed upon number of refurbished students. Is the complaint from the General Eclectic Human Resource department valid? EXPLAIN.

e. How many hours would it take to deliver the 2000 refurbished students?

f. If the company wanted to increase the capacity of the system, without adding new technology, what are some of the available options to the company?