A table needs to go through only one of the three assembly operations, only one of the three inspection stations, and the processing of the veneer occurs separately from, and simultaneously with, the preparation and cutting of the engineered wood. Mr. Usher is concerned with the bottleneck of the process and its impact on the companys ability to meet their demand. Please identify which operation is the bottleneck and what is the bottleneck time. If the company operates 8 hours a day, 20 days per month, what is the monthly capacity of the manufacturing process? Ms. Sawyer has secured other 11 sales points for the MidVision conference table (assume identical project annual sales for each new sales point, i.e., multiply the chosen projection by 12). Would they be able to meet the national demand for the MidVision table? What recommendations do you have for the company regarding its current capacity? Can Ms. Sawyer go ahead with the deals for the other 11 sales points? If not, why? What recommendations do you have for her?

The preparation of the veneer includes the pretreatment of the sheets (drying and bonding). Mr. Usher knows that the factory acquired by Ms. Sawyer has two bonding press (one is located in the back of the factory and the other one in the west wing). The service time of the bonding presses is 2.5 min per sheet. Mr. Usher is anticipating that the sheets will arrive at a rate of 1 sheet per minute if they are bonded in the west wing press and at a rate of 2 sheets per minute if the back press is utilized (this estimation is based on the plant layout). There is no way to see the presses from the drying station (currently located in the east wing). Assume that the sheets arrivals essentially follow a Poisson distribution, and the service times are approximated by a negative exponential distribution. What would the utilization of each the bonding presses be? What is the average waiting time at each of the presses? Based on these results, should Mr. Usher rethink the process diagram above? What recommendation will you make? Should Mr. Usher relocate the bonding presses? If so, what layout would be better?