A pizza delivery restaurant is looking to improve the process through which they serve their patrons. The clerk initiates orders at the rate of 1 order per minute, earning $8.00 per hour. The orders are sent to the kitchen where the pizzas are prepared by two chefs who earn $11.00 per hour each. It takes an average of 4 minutes to prepare each pizza for the oven. The chefs then place the pizzas in the ovens where it takes an average of 10 minutes to cook each pizza. The restaurant maintains 6 pizza ovens which hold 2 pizzas each. After the orders are cooked, it takes an average of 15 minutes to deliver each pizza. The restaurant employs 4 delivery drivers who earn $7.00 per hour. Overhead costs are 25% of labor and the average cost of ingredients is $3 per order
a. What is the capacity of this process?
b. What is the bottleneck?
c. What is the throughput time of a typical order?
d. Assume that on a typical night the restaurant receives 10 orders per hour. How many orders are in the system on average?
e. What is the average cost of an order when operating at 10 orders per hour?
f. What is the minimum cost per order we can achieve with the current system?