O’Hare Candy Company, maker of tasty sweets, is preparing to install a new licorice production facility and needs to determine the rates at which equipment should run. In particular, they are interested in the cutting/wrapping machines, as they are prone to frequent breakdowns. At this facility, there are three identical parallel lines fed by a single kitchen producing continuous strands of licorice. Each line is fed licorice at a rate of 1,374 kg/ hour and has its own dedicated cut/wrap machine (modeled as a single process). The wrappers cut the licorice into individual pieces and wrap them at a rate of 1,500 kg/ hour. These machines experience breakdowns of various forms. Analysis of breakdown data from similar equipment has concluded that the frequency is approximately one breakdown per hour with a high degree of variability that can best be represented by an exponential distribution. The time to repair a breakdown varies quite a bit as well; it can be modeled by a triangular distribution with parameters 3.75, 4.5, and 8.25 minutes. It is very costly to shut down the kitchen, so surge tables will be located in front of each machine. The current design calls for a surge table capacity of 1,000 kg. If the amount of product exceeds this capacity, then the rate at which the kitchen is feeding product to that machine is reduced to 900 kg/hour until less than 700 kg of licorice is on the table. kel01315_ch11_479-518.indd 515 05/12/13 3:19 PM 516 Chapter 11 For the analysis of this system, begin the simulation with all three surge tables full. Analyze the system to evaluate whether the planned surge table capacities are suff cient and whether the system will be able to produce licorice at the required rates.