Suppose that currently, Midwest processes 40,000 manual orders per year, with a total of 200,000 line items entered, and 30,000 electronic orders.

How much unused practical capacity does the company have?

If the company's efforts to encourage customers who order manually to change to electronic ordering results in 20,000 manual orders per year (100,000 line items entered) and 50,000 electronic orders, how many order entry operators will the company require? If order entry resource costs can be reduced in proportion to the number of employees, what will be the cost savings for the changes?

Returning to the original information in part D, if the company's process improvement efforts result in a 20% reduction in time to preform each of the three order entry actives, how many order entry operators will the company require? If order entry resource costs can be reduced in proportion to the number of employees, what will be the cost savings for the process improvement?