Question

Consider the following production process for manufacturing biscuits. The first step of the process is mixing where all of the ingredients are combined in the correct proportion to form dough. In the next step of the process, the dough is formed into sheets and cut into pieces in preparation for baking. The cut dough is then baked into biscuits and subsequently must be cooled. The final step of the process is packaging the biscuits for the consumer. The following table summarizes the production process along with the processing times at each step of the process. The process is highly automated, so assume that this is a machine-paced process with one machine available at each step. Process step Activity Time (Minutes per Batch) Mixing 15 Forming 10 Baking 12 Cooling 18 Packing 10 Round "Flow rate" to 3 decimal places. Round "Utilization rate" to a whole percent.

a)draw process flow diagram.

b)how long will it take to complete 50 batches of biscuit starting with an empty system?

Answer 1

a) Process flow diagram is following:

uffer Mixing プBuffe Forming Baking Cooling r Packing uffe uffe

b)

Cooling takes the longest time. Therefore, it is the bottleneck.

Cycle time = 18 minutes per batch

Starting from an empty system, first batch will take = 15+10+12+18+10 = 65 minutes

After the first batch, every subsequent batch will take 18 minutes

Total time to complete 50 batches of biscuits = 65+18*49

= 947 minutes