An assembly line with 17 tasks is to be balanced. The longest task is 2.1 minute

Question

An assembly line with 17 tasks is to be balanced. The longest task is 2.1 minutes, and the total time for all tasks is 23 minutes. The line will operate for 480 minutes per day. a. What are the minimum and maximum cycle times? (Round your answers to 2 decimal places.) Minimum cycle time_____? minutes Maximum cycle time_____? minutes b. What range of output is theoretically possible for the line? (Round your answers to 2 decimal places.) Range of output____? to______? units c. What is the minimum number of workstations needed if the maximum output rate is to be sought? (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round your final answer to the next whole number.) Minimum number of workstations _______? d. What cycle time will provide an output rate of 122 units per day? (Round your answer to 2 decimal places.) Cycle time_____? min/cycle e. What output potential will result if the cycle time is (1) 5 minutes? (2) 13 minutes? (Round your answers to 2 decimal places.) Cycle Time Potential Output (1) ___________?units (2) ___________?units

Explanation / Answer

FOLLOW THIS The assembly line is often described as a process that uses machines to move material from one place to another, but in practice, machines are not always needed. For instance, mass-market jewelers often use assembly lines in which materials are handed from one worker to another, without the benefit of machinery. At its most basic, an assembly line is a series of stations at which people or machines add to or assemble parts for a product. One of the values of the assembly line is its versatility: it can be simple, but it has the capacity to be very complex. An assembly line can begin as many different lines each devoted to a different component of a product, with the lines converging upon one another, becoming fewer until only one line is left for the final product. Automotive companies often have assembly lines that begin with raw materials and end five miles away with a completed automobile. A structure for a complex assembly line begins as one main line with stations along it that are fed by lines running perpendicular to it, with each of these side lines feeding components for the finished product. Although the assembly line has occasionally been considered outmoded, it has survived by repeatedly changing its form. Foundations of the Assembly Line The idea of the assembly line has many parents. In the scientific revolution of the eighteenth century, scientists, especially mathematicians tried to quantify what made an industry productive and tried to find ways to make industries more productive. The goal was to create an industry that functioned without human labor. The most important people of the time for the development of the assembly line were the Americans Oliver Evans and Eli Whitney and the Frenchman Gaspard Monge. Evans is known for his invention of the first motorized amphibious vehicle, but his most influential achievement was to design a flour mill. During the late eighteenth century, he used steam engines to power mills that used belt and screw conveyors, as well as moving hoppers, to move grain through the process of becoming flour and then to move the flour to where it could be packaged. While his equipment was not exactly an assembly line, all the basic components were there. Best known for creating the cotton gin, Eli Whitney also contributed to the development of the assembly line with his invention of interchangeable parts. Whitney created machine tools that could create parts so closely resembling each other they could be substituted for one another without harm. In 1798, the United States government ordered 10,000 muskets, and in a preview of the assembly line, Whitney set his employees to work on manufacturing parts that were assembled bit by bit into muskets. A Whitney musket could be repaired in the field with spare parts. Gaspard Monge made his contribution while in Italy during the Napoleonic era. He took the principals of descriptive geometry and applied them to machinery. By breaking a machine down into its component parts, Monge found that he could show how each part related to the others; this would evolve into technical drawing, which allowed people to make machines they had never seen, machines that would share interchangeable parts with any other machine made with the same diagrams. Henry Ford Making automobiles was a hobby for many Americans, and Henry Ford began as a hobbyist, but he brought to his hobby an unsurpassed ambition. In 1899, he started his own automobile manufacturing company; he wanted to produce cars in large enough quantities to make them available to everyone. In 1908, he divided up the tasks involved in manufacturing an automobile; he broke these tasks down to the function of each autoworker, conceiving of each worker as a part of a machine that made cars. At first, he tried having chassis pulled along factory floors with towropes. Men walked alongside the chassis to stations, at each station parts were added. Manufacturing time for a single automobile decreased from twelve hours to five and one-half hours. In 1913, he installed conveyor belts in his factories. With these, workers stood at their stations, each doing the same repetitive task over and over again. Manufacturing time for one car fell to around an hour and a half. At such a pace, Ford could make a small profit on each car but could make much more money from selling the cars in the millions. By The end of 1914, his employees were the highest paid industrial workers in the world; a worker performing the simplest of tasks could, and some did, become rich.

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