The Rosie Pastry Company makes Rose-embellished birthday cake cookies in several large commercial bakeries across the United States. The process is the same in all the bakeries and consists of mixing the cookie dough, forming the cookies (called base cakes), baking and cooling them. The cooled cookies are then iced and packaged. The packaged cookies are then shipped hourly to a company warehouse.

As part of a continuous improvement program, W. Guan, a consultant from an external firm, wondered if the production process could be improved. To understand the process, she took a pencil and clipboard and drew a value stream map of the cookie process.

Guan knew that the monthly production requirement was 30,000 cases. The bakery operated 25 days per month with 3 8-hour shifts per day with an hour long lunch break. Since the line is dedicated to Rose-embellished birthday cake cookies, there is no changeover time or set up time.

Step 1: Mixing the dough involves combining the flour, shortening, sugar and cocoa and mixing. The processing time for one case is 50 seconds. There are two operators. Guan counted the inventory at the various storage locations and found ingredients for 1,200 cases of finished cookies before the mixer.

Step 2: Forming, baking and cooling are done by an automated production machine that holds 20 cases operating continuously at the same rate. The machine is able to form, bake & cool 20 cases every 15 minutes. That means 20 are finished every 15 minutes. Guan counted 300 cases of mixed dough before step 2.

Step 3: Guan counted 60 cases waiting to be iced & assembled. Icing and cookie assembly are done in a single operation, with three operators. The processing time is 12 minutes per case. Guan counted 600 cases before step 4.

Step 4: Finally, the processing time for packaging is 90 seconds per case. There is one operator and 60 cases waiting to be shipped.

The Sales department informs the Warehouse about sales forecasts. The Warehouse sends electronic forecasts and daily orders to Production Control. Production Control issues electronic purchase orders to the ingredient and packaging suppliers weekly but provides daily orders to each of the internal departments in the bakery.

For the mixing step, full time employees (FTEs) = ________ (enter integer).