Electronics makes portable handheld devices that run simulation software be- cause "you never know when you'll feel the need to simulate." Needless to say, business hasn't been going well, and they recently fired the guy who came up with that slogan. On top of all that, the quality of these portable units is quite poor. Since each unit has a 3 year warranty, the refurbishing department, as depicted above, is overloaded with work. Returned units are arriving at an average rate of Ri = 5 units/hr.

The refurbishing process consists of three steps: receiving, diagnosis, and shipping. The average processing times for these three steps are TR = 5 min, TD = 15 min, and TS = 10 min, respectively. There are three types of workers (resource units) who actually do the work. The one type A worker can only work in receiving; the one type C worker can only work in shipping; however, all three of the type B workers can work in any of the three steps. In the current setup, there is one type B worker at each step of the process.

Inventory has been building up in this refurbishing center, and you have been tasked with identifying and resolving the problem.

Q1: What is the capacity in (units/hr) at each step?

Q2: Which of the three steps is the bottleneck?

Q3: What is the overall process capacity?

Q4: What is the throughput of the process?

Q5: What is the maximum process capacity that can be achieved by redesigning (moving type B workers around)? Describe this design.

Q6: In your redesign, what is the utilization at each step?

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A B B C B RECEIVING DIAGNOSIS SHIPPING