Question

Rockness Recycling refurbishes rundown business students. The process uses a moving belt, which carries each student through the five steps of the process in sequence. The five steps are as follows:

STEP	DESCRIPTION	TIME REQUIRED PER STUDENT
1	Unpack and place on belt	1.0	minutes
2	Strip off bad habits	1.2	minutes
3	Scrub and clean mind	1.0	minutes
4	Insert modern methods	1.5	minutes
5	Polish and pack	0.8	minute

One faculty member is assigned to each of these steps. Faculty members work a 40-hour week and rotate jobs each week. Mr. Rockness has been working on a contract from General Eclectic, which requires delivery of 2,000 refurbished students per week. A representative of the human resources department has just called complaining that the company hasn’t been receiving the agreed-upon number of students. A check of finished goods inventory by Mr. Rockness reveals that there is no stock left.

a.	Calculate the maximum output for each step.

Step	Maximum output (Students per week)
1
2
3
4
5

b.

Which step is the bottleneck?

	step 4
	step 5
	step 1
	step 2
	step 3

Answer 1

Time = 40 hours per week or 2400 minutes per week

A.

Step 1 – maximum output = 2400/1 = 2400 students per week

Step 2 – maximum output = 2400/1.2 = 2000 students per week

Step 3 – maximum output = 2400/1 = 2400 students per week

Step 4 – maximum output = 2400/1.5 = 1600 students per week

Step 5 – maximum output = 2400/.8 = 3000 students per week

B.

Correct Answer:

A.Step 4

Since, step 4 takes maximum time of 1.5 minutes per student and gives least output, then it is a bottleneck.