Power Toys, Inc. produces a small remote-controlled toy truck on a worker-paced line consisting of nine work stations with a single worker at each station. Stations and processing times are summarized in the following table:

Station	Task	Processing Time (seconds)
1	Mount battery units	75
2	Insert remote control receiver	85
3	Insert chip	90
4	Mount front axle	65
5	Mount back axle	70
6	Install electric motor	55
7	Connect motor to battery unit	80
8	Connect motor to rear axle	65
9	Mount plastic body	80

How much time is required to produce a single toy truck?

What is the bottleneck in this process?

What is the steady state capacity, in toy trucks per hour, of the assembly line?

What is the utilization of the worker at work station 2?

How long would it take to produce 100 trucks starting with an empty system?

The following table shows the projected costs associated with reducing the processing time at each work station in 5 second increments. The theoretical limits on time reduction at each workstation is 20 seconds less than the current processing time (For example, Mount Battery Units could be reduced from 75 seconds to 55 seconds. To make that full reduction, the cost would be $1,600.) Suppose you have $4,500 to invest in improving the throughput of the process. Show the sequence of steps you would take to allocate these funds and at each step show the number of trucks per hour that will be able to be produced. What would your total investment be?

Station	Task	5 Second Reduction Cost
1	Mount battery units	$400
2	Insert remote control receiver	$300
3	Insert chip	$500
4	Mount front axle	$900
5	Mount back axle	$200
6	Install electric motor	$100
7	Connect motor to battery unit	$400
8	Connect motor to rear axle	$500
9	Mount plastic body	$300