A part is to be produced on an automated transfer line. The total work content time to make the part is 36 minutes, and this work will be divided evenly amongst the workstations, so that the processing time at each station is 36/n, where n = the number of stations. In addition, the time required to transfer parts between workstations is 6 seconds. Thus, the cycle time = 0.1 + 36/n minutes. In addition, it is known that the station breakdown frequency will be 0.005, and that the average downtime per breakdown = 8.0 minutes.
(a) Given these data, determine the number of workstations that should be included in the line to maximize production rate. Also, what is the
(b) Production rate and
(c) Line efficiency for this number of stations?