A manufacturer of women's designer gloves has employed a team of MBA students to redesign her manufacturing unit. They gathered the following information. The manufacturing process consists of four activities: (1) fabric cutting; (2) dyeing; (3) stitching, done by specially designed machines; and (4) packaging. Activity times are shown below. Gloves are moved between activities by a conveyor belt that paces the flow of work (machine-paced line).
| Process Step |
Number of Machines |
Minutes per Glove |
| Cutting |
1 |
2 |
| Dyeing |
1 |
4 |
| Stitching |
1 |
3 |
| Packaging |
1 |
5 |
a. What is the process capacity in gloves/hour?
b. Which one of the following statements is true?
i. The capacity of the process increases by reducing the dyeing time
ii. If stitching time increases to 5 min./glove, the capacity of the process remains unchanged, but "time through an empty machine-paced process" increases.
iii. By reducing packaging time, the process capacity increases.
iv. By reducing cutting time, the capacity of the process increases.
c. What is the implied utilization of the packaging machine if the demand rate is 10 gloves/hour?
d. What is the flow time for a glove?