A manufactuer of women\'s designer gloves has employed a team of students to red

Question

A manufactuer of women's designer gloves has employed a team of students to redesign her manufacturing unit. They gathered the following information. The manufacturing process consists of four activities: (1) fabric cutting; (2) dyeing; (3) stitching, done by specially designed machines; and (4) packaging. Processing times are shown below. Gloves are moved between activities by a conveyor belt that paces the flow of work (machine-paced line).

Process Step Number of Machines Minutes per Glove

Cutting 1 2

Dyeing 1 4

Stitching 1 3

Packaging 1 5

a. What is the process capacity in gloves/hour?

b. Which on of the following statements is true?

i. The capacity of the process increases by reducing the dyeing time.

ii. If stitching time increases to 5 min./glove, the capacity of the process remains unchanged, but "time through an empty machine-paced process" increases.

iii. By reducing packaging time, the process capacity increases.

iv. By reducing cutting time, the capacity of the process increases.

c. What is the implied utilization of the packaging machine if the demand rate is 10 gloves/hour?

d. What is the flow time for the glove?

Explanation / Answer

a) The process capacity in gloves/hour = lowest of activity per hour = 60/5 =12

b) i --- The statement if not true as dyeing time is not bottle neck as its capacity>12

      ii--- The statement is not true as increasing stitching by 5 min the capacity = 60/8 =7.5 gl/hour

      iii--- True, by reducing packing time the process capacity will be >12

      iv --- False, capacity of machine is already 60/2 = 30, by reducing process capacity will not rise

c) Demand rate = 10 gloves/hour, capacity of process = 12

     => Utilisation = 10/12 = 83.33%

d) Flow time of glove = 60/12 = 5 minutes

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