Question

Review the Pai Pizza Case at the end of this document.

2. Which step is the bottleneck?

3. What is the capacity of the process?

4. If there are 7 pizzas in process, what delivery time should Peter provide a customer that just called and placed an order for 2 pizzas?

Case: Pai Pizza Pai Pizza is a local favorite for takeout pizza. Pai provides a limited menu of named pizzas. Custom pizza is also offered with toppings priced per pizza. The steps involved in the process are: order taking, pizza assembly, baking, boxing, receiving payment. Peter is in charge of the phone. It takes him about 8 minutes to take an order and transcribe it on the order sheet. Pam checks the online orders, sends off a formatted message about time when the pizza will be ready, and prints the orders; this takes her about 4 minutes. Time when the pizza will be ready is provided to the customer by noting the order # in the oven and the serial # of the current order. Pam also checks to see if the bins are full and refills them if needed from the refrigerator in the back of the room. Order sheets are clipped on a track above the assembly table; the clips can be moved to the end and removed as the assembly of the order is done. Aaron is the pizza assembler. He finds the crusts in the refrigerator behind him and reaches to the ingredients in bins in the assembly table. The assembly process takes about 5 minutes per pizza. The assembled pizza is placed on pizza peels ready to go into the oven. Pizzas are baked for about 12 minutes in an oven that Anne manages. The oven can take in 3 pizzas at a time. Isabel checks the pizzas that Anne places on the warming table against the order sheets. She gathers orders with multiple pizzas together. She cuts and boxes the pizzas, sticks the receipt on the box. This takes her about 3 minutes. Ian identifies box(es) for the order when the customer arrives and receives the payment. This takes him about 1 minute. When there are no customers, Ian checks the ingredients bins and refills them, if needed.

Answer 1

2.bottleneck step is baking Pizzas

The bottleneck is defined as the process step (station) in the flow diagram with the lowest capacity. The oven can take only 3 pizzas at a time. The resource(Here time to bake pizzas)is limited and hence considered as a bottleneck

3. The processing capacity is always equivalent to the capacity of the bottleneck.

Process capacity is 3 pizzas in 12 minutes(3/12) =15 pizzas in 60 minutes

4. Delivery time for 2 pizzas is 33 minutes(8+4+5+12+3+1 minutes)