At a sandwhich store, there are five sandwich assemblers and one cashier. Each s

Question

At a sandwhich store, there are five sandwich assemblers and one cashier. Each sandwich assembler can assemble a sandwich in 1 minute. It takes the cashier 15 seconds to collect payment. Assume one customer orders one sandwich.

1. What is the capacity of the sandwhich store, in customers per minute? What is the bottleneck?

2. The manager estimates that 300 customers per hour show up on average during the peak hours. Does the sandwhich store have enough capacity to serve its customers during the peak hours?

3. Would hiring one more sandwich assembler solve the capacity problem? What is the new capacity of the sandwhich store if one more sandwich assembler is hired?

4. Disregarding part c), would hiring one more cashier solve the capacity problem? What is the new capacity of the sandwhich store if one cashier is hired?

5. Disregarding part c) and d), the manager claims that she can solve the capacity problem by promoting “Order Online”, which eliminates the need to collect payment. What is the minimum number of customers per hour that should order online (among 300 customers per hour) to solve the capacity problem?

Explanation / Answer

1) Throughput rate of Sandwich assembly operation = 5 assemblers * 1 per minute = 5 per minute

Throughput rate of cashier = 60/15 = 4 per minute

Throughput rate of cashier is smaller. Therefore, it is the bottleneck.

Capacity of sandwich store = 4 customers per minute.

2) Capacity per hour = 4*60 = 240 customers per hour.

Therefore, sandwich store does not have enough capacity to serve 300 customers per hour during peak time.

3) No, hiring one more sandwich assembler would not solve the problem, because the bottleneck is cashier. So new capacity of Sandwich store is still the same if one more sandwich assembler is hired.

4) Yes, hiring one more cashier would solve the capacity problem. The new throughput rate of cashier operation = 2*4 = 8 customers per minute.

Now sandwich Assembly is the bottleneck. So new capacity of sandwich store = 5 customers per minute

5) We see that capacity of cashier operation is 240 customers per hour. Therefore, to meet the rush hour demand of 300 customers per hour, at least 60 customers (=300-240) must order online to solve the capacity problem.

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