Compute the new throughput time and mce

Question

Inverness Corporation has recently begun a continuous improvement campaign. As a consequence, there have been many changes in operating procedures. Progress has been slow, particularly in trying to develop new performance measures for the factory.

Management has been gathering the following data over the past four months:

	Month
	1		2		3		4
Quality control measures:
Customer complaints as a percentage of units sold	1.0	%	1.0	%	1.0	%	1.1	%
Warranty claims as a percentage of units sold	1.8	%	1.8	%	1.8	%	1.8	%
Defects as a percentage of units produced	4.3	%	3.9	%	3.5	%	3.0	%
Material control measures:
Scrap as a percentage of total cost	3.0	%	2.7	%	2.8	%	2.5	%
Machine performance measures:
Percentage of machine availability	80	%	79	%	81	%	80	%
Use as a percentage of availability	73	%	76	%	71	%	71	%
Average setup time (hours)	2.3		2.3		2.3		2.3
Delivery performance measures:
Throughput time	?		?		?		?
Manufacturing cycle efficiency	?		?		?		?
Delivery cycle time	?		?		?		?
Percentage of on-time deliveries	86	%	88	%	93	%	95	%

The president has attended conferences at which the importance of throughput time, manufacturing cycle efficiency, and delivery cycle time were stressed, but no one at the company is sure how they are computed. The data to compute these measures have been gathered and appear below:

	Month
	1	2	3	4
Wait time per order before start of production, in days	15.6	14.5	11.8	9.0
Inspection time per unit, in days	0.1	0.1	0.5	0.6
Process time per unit, in days	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5
Queue time per unit, in days	5.6	5.7	5.6	5.7
Move time per unit, in days	1.4	1.3	1.3	1.4

Required:
1.	For each month, compute the following operating performance measures: (Round your intermediate calculations and final answers to 1 decimal place.)

	Month
	1	2	3	4
a. Throughput time in days
b. Manufacturing cycle efficiency (MCE)	%	%	%	%
c. Delivery cycle time in days

3.	Refer to the move time, process time, and so forth, given above for month 4.

a.

Assume that in month 5 the move time, process time, and so forth, are the same as for month 4, except that through the implementation of Lean Production, the company is able to completely eliminate the queue time during production. Compute the new throughput time and MCE. (Round your intermediate calculations and final answers to 1 decimal place.)

Throughput time in days
Manufacturing cycle efficiency (MCE)	%

b.

Assume that in month 6 the move time, process time, and so forth, are the same as for month 4, except that the company is able to completely eliminate both the queue time during production and the inspection time. Compute the new throughput time and MCE. (Round your intermediate calculations and final answers to 1 decimal place.)

Throughput time in days
Manufacturing cycle efficiency (MCE)	%