A line that produces half-gallon ice cream packs. All the stations in this line are single-machine, and the line is nearly balanced. Suppose that you, as the production manager to evaluate the performance of the line. You have estimated the bottleneck rate to be 2,160 packs per 18-hour day and the raw process time to be 27 minutes. The actual production rate of this line is 1,800 packs per day with an average cycle time of 3 hours.

1. Estimate the average WIP for this line:

WIP: ______________

b. In a maximum of three sentences, explain the effect of increasing the capacity of a non-bottleneck station on the throughput of the line. Assume that the WIP level stays constant.

c. Suppose that you decide to replace a single-machine workstation with a four-parallel-machine workstation. However, the capacity of the new workstation remains the same. Explain how the throughput may be affected by the new setting:

d. You are also thinking about moving batches of ice cream packs between the workstations. Explain how this strategy may affect the performance of the line instead of moving single packs: