2. (total 10 points) The Happy Toy Company\'s R&D; department is always looking

Question

2. (total 10 points) The Happy Toy Company's R&D; department is always looking for great ideas for new toys. On average, the R&D; department receives 10 new toy ideas a week. To go from idea to approved product, the idea must go through 5 stages: Initial Mockup screening Safety testing Focus groupFinal decision In initial screening a staff member spends 2 hours considering the idea. There are two staff members at this stage. In mock-up, the idea is sent to one of many suppliers to produce a physical mock-up of the toy. There is essentially unlimited capacity at this stage, but it takes 4 days to get the mockup built even though multiple mockups can be built simultaneously. In safety testing each idea requires 2 days from a staff member to have the idea checked for safety. There are seven staff members at this stage. In focus groups each idea requires 3 hours from a staff member to have the idea test

Explanation / Answer

a) Utilization at each stage is as calculated below

Utilization at stage 5 (Final decision) is 1.00 (100%) , therefore it is bottleneck.

b) Minimum lead time for a new idea = 57 hours

c) New throughput rate of the combined stage = (2+7+1)/(2+16+3) = 0.476 per hour It is still more than the bottleneck throughput rate. Therefore process capacity remains same as before, i.e. 0.25 ideas per hour

d) Throughput rate = (Number of members / processing time)*(1-probability of fail)

Utilization at each stage is calculated below.

Final decision is the bottleneck , because its utilization is 100%

Stage # of members Processing Time (hours) Rate (units / hour) Utilization m T R=m/T =R/rb 1 2 2 1.00 0.25 2 1.E+10 32 3.E+08 0.00 3 7 16 0.44 0.57 4 1 3 0.33 0.75 5 1 4 0.25 1.00 rb, T0 57.0 0.25

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