Assignment 3 – Home Work

Student Name

TMGT 471/571

Due: (Click on the assignment in blackboard to determine this)

Please make sure that the calculation section of this assignment is done and submitted in an Excel Spreadsheet.

Home Work 3

Question #1

A production line is to be designed for a job with four tasks. The cycle times are 5.4 minutes, 2.8 minutes, 3.9 minutes, and 4.7 minutes. The raw process time is ______ and the bottleneck cycle time is ______ minutes.

(3 Points)

Question #2

Do some research on what takt time is and then determine takt time from the information below. In your assignment submission please make sure you define takt time.

The takt time a production line is expected to meet is 3000 parts over the next five day week in which each day has 12hrs of available time. There are four operations in the line and their cycle times are 1.5 minutes, 0.4 minutes, 1.03 minutes, and 2.9 minutes per job. The takt time is ______ minutes, and the bottleneck time is _________ minutes.

·         Will the line make the takt time? (Please show your work)

(4 Points)

Question #3

Consider the following three-station production line with a single product that must visit stations 1, 2, and 3 in sequence.

·         Station 1 has 3 identical machines with an average processing times of 5 minutes per job

·         Station 2 has 10 identical machines with an average processing time of 20 minutes per job.

·         Station 3 has 4 machines with average processing times of 3 minutes per job.

1. How long does it take for a product to go through the entire production line? (.5 points)
2. What is the cycle time of each station? (.5 points)
3. What is the bottleneck rate for the production line and what station is it? (1 point)
4. Compute w₀ for production line? (1 point)
5. What is the takt time of the line given that 5600 parts have to be made over the course of 100 hrs? (1 point)
6. Can the three station production line make this takt time? If not how many machines would I need at station 1, 2, and 3? (1 point)

Question #4

T&D electric manufactures high-voltage switches and other equipment for electric utilities. One line that is staffed by three workers assembles a particular type of switch. Currently the threes workers have fixed assignments; each worker fastens a specific set of components on the switch and passes it downstream on a rolling conveyor. The conveyor has capacity to allow a queue to build up in front of each worker. The bottleneck is the middle station with a rate of 11 switches per hour. The raw processing time is 15 minutes. To improve efficiency of the line, management is considering cross-training the workers and implementing some form of flexible labor system.

a)      What is the critical amount of WIP that is needed by this line? (1 point)

b)      If the current throughput is 10.5 switches per hour with an average WIP level of 7 jobs what is the average cycle time? (1 point)

c)      What is the practical worst case throughput of the line? (1 point)

d)     Is there any room for improvement on this line? (1 point)

Question #5

Floor-On, Ltd., operates a line that produces self-adhesive tiles. This line consists of single-machine stations and is almost balanced (i.e., station rates are nearly equal). A manufacturing engineer has estimated the bottleneck rate to be 2200 cases per 16-hour day and the raw process time to be 30 minutes. The line has averaged 1,500 cases per day, and cycle time has averaged 5 hours.

a)      What is the estimated average WIP level? (1 point)

b)      How does the performance of the average throughput compare to the practical worst case throughput? (1 point)

c)      What would happen to the throughput of the line if we increased the capacity of bottleneck station and held the WIP at its current level? (1 point)

d)     If after process improvements the ten machines that required ten workers to run them are no longer needed. Instead five workers are now needed what would you do with the remainder of workers not working on that line anymore? (And please don’t fire them) (1 point)