Dental Clinic provides general dental care to residents of New York on walk-in basis. The clinic has started receiving complaints from patients that the waiting time is too long and has asked you to investigate whether this problem can be solved. Upon arrival, customers first received a series of paperwork from the receptionist and fill out relevant information such as personal health records and insurance provider. The form is then handed back to the receptionist who enters the information into the computer system for the dentist to see. A dental assistant then takes an X-ray from the patient. A dentist then performs the check up and discusses any issues with the patient. Based on conversations with staff members at the clinic, you have obtained the following information on the process:
- It takes about 5 minutes for customer to fill out the paperwork.
- Entry of information on the paperwork into the system and verification with past records takes another 5 minutes for a receptionist. There are two receptionists.
- It takes 15 minutes, on average, for the dental assistant to take an X-ray. There are three dental assistants on shift at any moment.
- There are 10 dentists working at the clinic. Each checkup takes 30 minutes, on average.
The following table summarizes the process data collected above.
Resources Process Staffing(# of workers) Activity Time ( min /patient)
Self-service Paperwork - 5
Receptionist Data Entry 2 5
Dental Assistant X-ray 3 15
Dentist Checkup 10 30
Assuming that there exists unlimited demand, unless otherwise stated.
a. Draw a process diagram of this process.
b. What is the capacity (patient/hour) at the resource “Dentist”?
c. What is the bottleneck in the process?
d. Assuming unlimited demand, what would be the flow rate?
e. Assuming unlimited demand, what would be the utilization at resource “Receptionist”?
f. Assuming the process started empty. How long would it take to serve 20 patients?