Furniture Face Lift refinishes old wood furniture. Their process for refinishing chairs has 8 workers and 4 stations. Each chair starts at the Stripping station, then goes to Priming, then to Painting and finally to Inspection. Where there are multiple workers with a station, each worker works independently on his/her own chair. Assume inventory buffers are allowed between each station.
Station 1, Stripping, has 3 workers and the processing time is 2.7 hours per worker. Station 2, Priming, has 2 workers and the processing time is 1.1 hours per worker. Station 3, Painting, has 2 workers and the processing time is 1.5 hours per worker. Station 4, Inspection, has 1 worker and the processing time is 1.8 hours per chair per worker.
What is the maximum number of chairs per hour that can be produced? Assume they start the day with inventory at each station to work on.