Victoria Hair Salon styles hair in three operations washing, cutting/setting, and drying and charges $15 per styling. (Each styling is one unit.) Victoria styles hair on a walk-in basis and does not take appointments; customers who face a wait walk across the street to another salon. Victorias owners find it has a cutting/setting bottleneck on Saturdays due to a limited number of stylists. The bottleneck exists for a total of eight hours each Saturday. Pertinent information follows:

Washing Cutting/Setting Drying

Hourly Capacity 30 Units 12 Units 15 Units

Saturday Capacity (8 hours) 240 Units 96 Units 120 Units

Actual Saturday Production 96 Units 96 Units 96 Units

Fixed Operating Costs per Saturday $10 $75 $100

Each hair styling has variable costs of $5. Victorias output is constrained by the 96 units of cutting/setting capacity. Two options exist that can relieve the bottleneck at the cutting/setting operation. Consider the differential costs associated with each of the following operations to determine the impact on throughput.

Option a.Victoria can increase bottleneck output by hiring one non-stylist employee to prepare customers for the cutting/setting by washing and combing their hair. This would increase the cutting/setting capacity to 115 each Saturday. The cost for this additional employee is $64 per Saturday.

Option b. Victoria could hire another stylist for each Saturday increasing the cutting/setting capacity to 108 each Saturday and costing an additional $120 per stylist.

Should Victorias owner go ahead with either of the two options? Why or why not?