Chic-ken Rulez is a food vendor at the state fair that only sells complete box meals which includes a sandwich (chicken or turkey), fries, and drink. Customers walk up to the counter at Chic-ken Rulez and place an order.

The counter employee enters the order into the system which is displayed on several screens for all other employees to see the items that need to be made. In the kitchen sandwich makers assemble the selected sandwich once it displays on the order screen. The fry master will cook, salt, and scoop the ordered fries into a cup. Meanwhile, the employee that took the order, will prepare the requested drink. Once the sandwich and fries are complete, they are place in a window where the counter employee places all items in a box and delivers it to the customer. Taking the order and entering it into the system takes 5 minutes. Once entered, the display screens instantly show the items to be made. The counter employee then takes an average of 3 minutes to make a drink. On average, it takes sandwich makers 8 minutes to complete a sandwich and place in the pick-up window. The fry maker takes 12 minutes on average to complete a cup of fries and place in the pick-up window. It takes the counter employee 10 minutes to box all items and hand to customer for delivery. All times listed are flow times for each activity and include the effects of waiting.

Complete parts below: a) What is the flow time of the process?

________ minutes

b) How is process flow time effected if the company bought an automatic potato slicer and could reduce the amount of time it takes the fry master to make a cup of fries to 7 minutes, instead of 12?

________ minutes

c) Instead of the change listed in b, assume the sandwich assemblers streamlined their sub process and could make a sandwich in 5 minutes, instead of 8. How is process flow time effected?

________ minutes

Using the original times listed in the question. Chic-ken Rulez wishes to improve the process by reducing the time to deliver a meal box. Customers often make an order and leave the counter area to find seating. This is the root cause for delivery times being so long because on average a customer's meal order is called 3 times before it is actually picked up which completes delivery. To reduce this process time, Chic-ken Rulez is going to provide customers with a miniature plastic chicken with a GPS tracker inside at the time of the order. The order process is the same except now the box and delivery activity will be two separate activities. Delivery is now performed by food runners that use a handheld device to locate the GPS plastic chickens, collect the plastic chicken for re-use, and deliver a customers ordered meal box. It now takes 2 minutes to box a meal. Based on preliminary tests, the average time to locate a GPS plastic chicken and deliver a meal box in the food area takes 7 minutes.

d) What is the flow time of this redesigned process?

_______ minutes