At a nail salon, there are 5 steps in completely serving a customer:
• Activity 1: Welcome a guest. (1 minute)
• Activity 2: Clip and file nails. (3 minutes)
• Activity 3: Paint. (5 minutes)
• Activity 4: Dry. (10 minutes)
• Activity 5: Check out the customer. (4 minutes)
The tasks are split among 3 servers:
• S1 does Activity 1. • S2 does Activities 2 and 3. • S3 does Activities 4 and 5. Server 3 only needs to escort the customer to the drying chair to complete activity 4. The drying process itself is automated and thus does not require server attention. The time of escorting is negligible.
1) How do you determine the bottleneck of the process? (activities 4 and 5 can be done in parallel)
2) How do you determine what is the utilization of server 2? Assume demand= bottleneck capacity.
3) Assuming demand = bottleneck capacity, What is the average labor utilization of the servers?
4) Assume a wage rate of $12 per hour. How do you determine the direct labor costs for one customer?