Three hairstylists run a salon for busy professionals. They stay open from 6:30 am to 9:30 pm.

They perform hair-styling activities.

On average it takes 30 minutes to style and 6 minutes to bill the customer.

When a customer arrives, they check in with the receptionist and this takes 2 minutes. They then go to the shampoo area which is staffed with one person and this takes 10 minutes. One stylist then takes charge and performs the remaining activities consecutively (style and bill).

Draw the process and determine thefollowing:

How many customers can be served per day in the salon? What is the capacity of a stylist? What is the capacity of the shampoo person? What is the capacity of the receptionist? What/where is the bottleneck? If throughput of the salon is 75 customers per day, what is the utilization of each resource pool? If the salon projects that demand will increase to 90 customers per day, can the salon handle the extra demand?

How would the theoretical capacity change if the billing task was transferred to the receptionist? Does the bottleneck change? How much has the stylists' capacity increased? How much has the receptionist's capacity decreased? Will this change to the process allow the salon to meet the forecasted demand of 90 customers per day? If actual throughput increases to 88 customers per day after the the change, what is the new utilization of each resource pool? Is this a good process change? Please explain your reasoning why it is or is not.

If the salon projects that demand is going to increase by 15% within the next year and the salon currently has just one shampooing station and three stylist chairs, what actions would you take to increase capacity. You will want to consider capital investments as well as new personnel while keeping operating costs to a minimum at the same time.

In responding to this assignment you are expected to create summary tables similar to those in the New Life exercise.

As some guidance to the number of tables to include in the report, I suggest a minimum of one flow chart and four tables. Along with including a current state flow chart where I would recommend a cross-functional flow chart showing the activities of the receptionist, the shampoo person and the hair stylists, four tables should be included: a current state effective capacity table with columns for unit load, effective capacity of a resource unit, number of units in the resource pool and the effective capacity of the resource pool; a current state capacity utilization table and two more similar tables showing the moving of one of the tasks from the hair stylist to the receptionist.