Shiffrin Corporation produces plastic molded components for the home appliance industry. The information presented here, collected by a team of KAIST students, is about a process for producing a variety of plastic moldings at Shiffrin's Vail, Colorado manufacturing facility. The plant produces 12,600 components per month. It runs 20 days per month, one shift per day. A shift is eight hours with one 30-minute and two 15-minute breaks, during which work stops. The manufacturing process at Shiffrin is divided into three tasksmolding, sub-assembly, and finishing. The plant supervisor, Mikaela, informed the KAIST team that because of the uncertainty in mix of demand for the different types of components, to cover for other uncertainties, and to get transportation-cost breaks, they maintain some inventory of raw material. As a result, raw material spends 3 days on average in storage before being used by the molding task at the start of the production process. The KAIST team observed that there were two workstations (each with 1 machine and 1 employee) working in parallel on molding, and each workstation molded 50 components in one hour. Owing to the different varieties of components and the time that it takes to set up the machines for different components, these components spend an average of 1.5 days between molding and sub-assembly. The sub-assembly task had one workstation with one employee, who produced sub-assemblies for 45 finished components in thirty minutes. These sub-assemblies spend an average of 1 day between subassembly and the next task, which is finishing. The finishing task had three employees on three workstations. In 30 minutes, one employee had finished for shipment 4 boxes of 5 components each. As finishing is completed in boxes of 5 units, the processing time is 1.5 minutes * 5 units per box = 7.5 minutes. Finished goods spend 2.4 days on average in inventory before being picked for shipments to customers.

a. Prepare simple process map for the KAIST student team, showing the three tasks (boxes) for production, and waiting (triangles) at each stage. 4 points

Compute and report, showing your work:

b. Processing times (time taken to complete unit), in minutes, for the molding and subassembly tasks. 8 points

c. Capacity utilizations, in percentage, for the molding and subassembly tasks. 8 points

d. Total throughput time, also known as total flow time, in days (including the times spent by material sitting in inventory at different stages from raw material to finished goods). 4 points

e. Throughput rate, also known as flow rate. 4 points

f. Inventory in the system, in units. 8 points

g. Ratio of value adding time (sum of processing times) to throughput time. (Comparison of time spent being worked on compared to time spent in the system). 4 points