A manufacturing plant produces portable bluetooth speakers for a smartphone manufacturer through the following three-stage process:

1. Stage 1: Receiving: The plant receives raw materials from its suppliers by truck. The plant can receive up to 8 tons (we will use metric tons, so 1 ton = 1000 kg) of raw materials per day. The plant also has enough storage space for exactly 8 tons of these raw materials.

2. Stage 2: Plastic molding and Electronics: The plant uses the raw materials to produce two intermediate components of the speakers, the plastic molding and the internal electronics. Separate machines are used to produce the plastic molding and the electronics, and they can all be run simultaneously. There is one machine to convert raw materials into plastic molding, and it can convert up to 1 tons of raw materials into 1 tons of plastic molding each day. There are two machines that convert raw materials into electronics and each machine can convert 1 ton of raw materials into 1 ton of electronics units each day. Completed plastic moldings and electronics are then stored until Stage 3. For simplicity, we assume that all raw materials can be converted into either plastic molding or electronics. Each plastic molding weighs .02 kg and each unit of electronics weighs .04 kg. 3.

Stage 3: Assembly: Plastic moldings and internal electronics are assembled into portable speakers. There are 100 factory workers who can each assemble 30 speakers each hour and work 8 hours each day. Each speaker requires 2 plastic moldings and 2 units of electronics. After assembly, the speakers are stored and prepared for shipping

a Represent the flow of manufacturing smartphones through the system described above using a simple process flow diagram

b For the system described above, what is the systems capacity? Where are the bottlenecks?

c What is the utilization of each stage?

d The bottle company estimates that 9 tons of materials (includes raw materials as well as intermediate or final products) are in the plant at a time. On average, how long does it take to produce one speaker from the beginning of Stage 1 to the end of Stage 3 if the system operates at its bottleneck capacity?

e What is your recommendation to eliminate the bottleneck you found in part b if you can adjust capacity in only one stage?