Question

Cooper River Glass Works (CRGW) is a company that produces artisanal glass products such as vases, lamps, stained-glass, and art-glass installations. When it began lamp production a few years ago, it entered with a single product, the highly successful "Alpha" model. The process workflow for Alpha production is shown below along with the processing times at each station, material costs, MSRP, and typical weekly demand. Alpha → Step 1 @ station 1 (10 minutes) → Step 2 @ station 2 (5 min.) → Step 3 @ station 3 (15 min.) → Step 4 @ station 4 (10 min.) → Product: Alpha Raw materials: $10/unit Price: $80/unit Demand: 200 units/week Lamp assembly takes place in 4 stations staffed by 4 different lamp-building artisans. For example, the artisan assigned to station 2 only performs step 2 of every Alpha lamp. Question 1: What is the theoretical capacity of each resource pool in this process? Question 2: What is the constraint? That is, which resource pool is the theoretical process bottleneck? Question 3: What is the theoretical overall process capacity? (You may find it helpful to fill in the following table before answering questions 1-3.) Unit Load (minutes one person spends on one lamp) Theoretical Capacity of Resource Pool (total lamps per hour) Resource Pool Station 1 artisan Station 2 artisan Station 3 artisan Station 4 artisan

Answer 1

a)

The table is filled using the following formulas

Unit load = processing time

Theoretical capacity = number of artisans * 60 minutes per hour / unit load

The theoretical capacity of each resource is calculated and shown in the following table

Resource pool	Unit load	Theoretical capacity of resource pool
Station 1 artisan	10	1*60/10 = 6 lamps per hour
Station 2 artisan	5	1*60/5 = 12 lamps per hour
Station 3 artisan	15	1*60/15 = 4 lamps per hour
Station 4 artisan	10	1*60/10 = 6 lamps per hour

b)

Theoretical capacity of station 3 artisan is the lowest of all. Therefore, it is the constraint.

Station 3 artisan is the bottleneck

c)

Theoretical overall process capacity = capacity of the bottleneck

= 4 lamps per hour