Expert Answer
First step –
Flow rate through the first step = 9 minutes per customer
Number of receptionists available = 3
The effective flow rate adjusted for single receptionist = 9/3 = 3 minutes
Second Step :
Flow rate through second step = 4 minutes
Number of cashiers = 4
The effective flow rate through the second step = 1 minute.
Third Step
The flow rate through third step = 6 minutes
Number of license processing stations = 5
The effective flow rate through the third step = 6/5 = 1.2 minutes
The effective flow rates are as follows –
- First step = 3 minutes
- Second step = 1 minute
- Third step = 1.2 minutes
The bottle neck step is the step with highest flow rate. That is step one with flow rate of 3 minutes. This will decide process flow rate. Therefore, process flow rate = 3 minutes per customer.
Therefore flow rate of the process = 60/3 = 20 customers per hour
If one server is added to the bottleneck resource, the effective flow rate for step one will be = 3/2 = 1.5
The new flow rate will be = 60/1.5 = 40 customer per hour