Question: A flexible manufacturing cell consists of a manual load/unload station, three CNC machines, and an automated guided vehicle system (AGVS) with two vehicles. The vehicles deliver parts to the individual machines, drop off the parts, then go perform other work. The work-stations are listed in the table below, where the AGVS is listed as station 5.
The FMC is used to machine four workparts. The product mix, routings, and processing times for the parts are presented in the table below:
The mean travel time of the AGVS between any two stations in the FMC is 3 min, which in-cludes the time required to transfer loads to and from the stations. Given that the loading on the system is maintained at 10 parts (10 workparts in the system at all times), use the ex-tended bottleneck model to determine:
(a) the bottleneck station,
(b) the production rate of the system and the average time to complete a unit of production, and
(c) the overall uti-lization of the system, not including the AGVS.