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Homework answers / question archive / A steel product is manufactured by starting with raw material (carbon steel wire) and then processing it sequentially through five operations using machines A to E, respectively (see table below)
A steel product is manufactured by starting with raw material (carbon steel wire) and then processing it sequentially through five operations using machines A to E, respectively (see table below). This is the only use that the five machines are put to. The hourly rates for each machine are given in the table. Answer the following questions. Use the original output rates to answer each question (i.e., disregard any changes mentioned in previous questions).
Operation: 1 2 3 4 5 Machine: A B c D E Hourly unit output rate: 80 100 50 110 90
Consider the following questions.
a. What is the maximum output per hour of the steel product?
b. By how much would the output be improved if the output of B was increased to 110?
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c. By how much would the output be improved if the output for C was increased to 60?
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d. By how much would the output be improved if the output for C was increased to 80?
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e. What is the effect on the system if machine A can only manage an output of 50 in one hour?
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f. What is the effect on the system if machine C can only manage an output of 30 in one hour?
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g. What is the effect on the system if machine B is allowed to drop to an output of 40 in one hour?
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a. Maximum output per hour of the steel product is equal to the output of the bottleneck operation. Bottleneck operation is that operation which has the minimum output per hour. So, Bottleneck operation is C with output = 50 units per hour.
Therefore maximum output per hour of the steel product = 50 products
b. B is not the bottleneck operation, therefore increasing its output rate does not affect the overall output of the steel product. So output will increase by 0 products
c. Output will improve by 10 products.
C is the bottleneck operation with current output rate = 50 , increasing it to 60 will improve the output by 10 products
d. If the output for C was increased to 80, then the overall output of the line will be 80 because there is a bottleneck increased from 50 to 80.
e. A is not the bottleneck operation, Even if its output rate is dropped to 50 units per hour, C remains the bottleneck operation, because output rate of C (50) is still the lowest.
We lose 0 products
f. C is the bottleneck operation, reduction in its output rate from 50 to 30 will result in decrease in the output of the steel product. Therefore,
We lost 20 products
g. In this case, B becomes the new bottleneck operation and the new output of the steel product is 40 units. So
we lose 10 products.
