QUESTION
Assembly Line Problem
answer question a to e with explanation please
Operations Management Gulf University for Science & Technology
MGMT 521 Dr. Jean-Paul Arnaout
ASSEMBLY LINE PROBLEM
Christopher, a business major at the University of South Carolina (USC), has opened Six Points Saco
(SPS), a specialty subs—taco restaurant, at the rim of the USC campus. SPS has grown in popularity over
the first year that it has been in operation, and Christopher is trying to perfect the business model
before making it into a franchise. He wants to maximize the productivity of his staff, as well as serve
customers well in a timely fashion. One area of concern is the drive‐thru operation during the 11:30
A.M. to 12:30 P.M. lunch hour.
The process of fulfilling an order involves fulfilling the tasks listed in the table.
Christopher is interested in getting a better understanding of the staffing patterns that will be needed to
operate his restaurant. After taking a course in operations management at the university, he knows that
fulfilling a customer order at SPS is very similar to operating an assembly line. He wants to apply OM for
examining different demand scenarios for serving his customers.
- a) If all the seven tasks are handled by one employee, how many customers could be served per
hour?
- b) If Christopher wants to process 45 customers per hour, how many employees will he need
during the peak period?
- c) With the number of employees determined in part (b), what is the maximum number of
customers who could be served every hour (i.e., what is the maximum output capacity)?
- d) Assuming that no task is assigned to more than one employee, what is the maximum output
capacity from this assembly line? How many employees will be needed to actually accomplish
this maximum output capacity?
- e) Beyond the output accomplished in part (d), if Christopher decides to add one additional worker
to help out with a bottleneck task, where should he add that worker? With that addition, would
he be able to process more customers per hour? If so, what is the new maximum output
capacity for the drive‐thru?
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| Subject | Business | Pages | 3 | Style | APA |
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Answer
Assembly Line Problem
Question (a)
According to the task table, one employee takes 2 minutes 57seconds (177 seconds) to serve one customer. Therefore, to calculate the number of customers served in an hour, it is best to change the hour into seconds (3600 seconds) then divide with the time taken by one employee to handle all the seven tasks. This will be 3600 divided by 177, which equals the number of customers served in an hour, 20. Thus, if one employee handles all the seven tasks, he/she will only serve twenty customers per hour.
Question (b)
According to the answer in question (a), one employee serves 20 customers per hour. Therefore, it will take two employees to serve 45 customers per hour. To achieve this answer, the number of customers served by one employee per hour (20) is divided by the number of customers Christopher wants to process per hour (45). During the peak season, Christopher will need at least three employees to serve more than 45 customers every hour.
Question c
According to question (b), Christopher will need at least three employees during the peak season to process more than 45 customers every hour. Given that there will be three employees, the maximum number of customers served every hour would be 60 customers. If the employees are two, the maximum output capacity will range from 40 to 45 customers served per hour.
Question (d)
Assuming that no task is assigned to more than one employee, the maximum output capacity of this assembly line would still range from 40 to 50, given that they will be using the same time to prepare the order. For instance, it will still take 25 seconds for the person taking an order at the booth. Moreover, employees will have to wait for others to finish their order assembling to deliver it as one. The maximum number of employees who will accomplish this maximum output capacity would be seven, with each allocated a specific task.
Question (e)
Suppose Christopher decides to add one additional employee to help out with a bottleneck task. In that case, he should add this worker to assist in gathering drinks, assembling taco orders, and sub-order. These three areas appear to be the areas that use the most time while completing an order. With this addition, Christopher will process more customers per hour, with a maximum output capacity of 45 to 55 customers served every hour.
References
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