The Stik Pen Corporation assembles ball point pens at its Tennessee facility for its line of low priced office stationary products. The Tennessee facility produces pens for distribution throughout North America.

The pen assembly line consists of seven stations connected by a high speed conveyor system and automated material handling equipment that move individual pen assemblies along a fully connected machine paced line. The overall flow is illustrated in Figure $1$ and Table $1$ provides station specific information including the activity time per pen and number of worked assigned to each station. At stations with more than one worker, the activity is performed in parallel $($e$.$g$.,$ for Station $3,$ each of the $5$ employees works on different pens and each takes $72$ seconds to complete one pen$).$ The conveyor belt splits into parallel lines at these stations but continues to be synchronized.

Ballpoint Assemblies.JPG

Figure $1$ Stik Pen Ballpoint Pen Assembly Line Process Flow Diagram

Station Task Activity Time $($per pen$)$ Number of resources$*$

$1$ Cartridge$/$Ballpoint Assembly $8$ seconds $1$ worker

$2$ Insert Cartridge into Pen Molding $14$ seconds $1$ worker

$3$ Pen Molding Assembly $172$ seconds $5$ workers

$4$ Pen Molding Assembly $244$ seconds $4$ workers

$5$ Grip Assembly $25$ seconds $2$ workers

$6$ Inspect$/$Test $120$ seconds $6$ workers

$7$ Packaging $30$ seconds $3$ workers

Table $1$: Stik Pen Process Flow and Data for the Ballpoint Pen Assembly Line

Which station is the capacity bottleneck?