The administrator of the Life-Time Insurance Company HMO, Ms. Taylor, was anxious to solve potential problems before their new clinic opened in Austin, Texas. In Buffalo, New York, where the original clinic is located, the pharmacy had been extremely busy from the beginning, and long waiting times for prescriptions to be filled presented a very real problem. The Buffalo HMO pharmacy was modern, spacious, and well designed. The peak time for prescriptions was between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M. During this period, prescriptions would back up, and the waiting time would increase. After 5 P.M., the staff would be reduced to one pharmacist and one technician, but the two had no trouble providing very timely service throughout the evening. Ms. Taylor became acutely aware of the long waiting times after several complaints had been lodged. Each stated that the waiting time had exceeded 1 hour. The pharmacy is staffed with five persons on duty until 5 P.M. Ms. Taylor personally studied the tasks of all the pharmacy personnel. She noted the time required to accomplish each task, and her results are listed below. The prescriptions were filled in an assembly-line fashion by two technicians and three pharmacists, and each person performed only one task. Activity Time in Seconds Receive prescriptions 24 Type labels 120 Fill prescriptions 60 Check prescriptions 40 Dispense prescriptions 30
1. Identify and draw an improved layout (process flow) that will allow to have the capacity of 50 patients per hour. use tow pharmacist and two technicians for this layout .Explain what you improve, identify bottleneck, cycle time and flow capacity per hour.
2. In addition to saving on personal cost, what benefits does this arrangement have?