Mr. K’s is a hair salon whose service process includes six activities conducted in the sequence described below. (The time required for each activity is shown in parentheses):
Activity 1: Welcome guests and serve herb tea. (10 minutes)
Activity 2: Offer styling suggestions. (15 minutes)
Activity 3: Condition hair. (10 minutes)
Activity 4: Do the hair. (30 minutes)
Activity 5: Wash hair. (10 minutes)
Activity 6: Check out the guest. (5 minutes)
Three servers (S1, S2, and S3) offer the services in a worker-paced line. The assignment of tasks to servers is as the following: S1: Activity 1 and Activity 2. S2: Activity 3 and Activity 4. S3: Activity 5 and Activity 6.
1. What is the process capacity in [customers/hour]?
2. If the demand of Mr. K’s is one customer per hour, what is the average labor utilization (in %) of the servers?
3. Assume that Mr. K’s pays each worker an hourly wage of $18 per hour. What is the cost of direct labor in [$/customer] when the demand is one customer per hour?