An assembly line consists of three workstations (WS)with each station's activity time as shown. When fully operational this line could assemble _______ completed items every 60 minutes.
A)20
B)15
C)12

Question

An assembly line consists of three workstations (WS)with each station's activity time as shown.  When fully operational this line could assemble _______ completed items every 60 minutes.
A)20 
B)15 
C)12

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

To calculate the maximum number of completed items in 60 minutes, we need to identify the workstation which takes the longest time. In this case, we see that workstation 2 takes 20 minutes, while workstations 1 and 3 take only 10 minutes each. This means that workstation 2 is the bottleneck, since it takes the longest time and determines the maximum number of items that can be completed in 60 minutes.

Therefore, the maximum number of completed items in 60 minutes will depend on how many times workstation 2 can complete its activity within that time frame. Since it takes 20 minutes for workstation 2 to complete its activity, it can only do so 3 times in 60 minutes (60/20=3).

On the other hand, workstations 1 and 3 can each complete their activities twice in 60 minutes, since they only take 10 minutes each. Therefore, the overall rate of completed items in 60 minutes is determined by the slowest workstation, which in this case is workstation 2.

So, the total number of completed items in 60 minutes will be 3 (from workstation 2) x 2 (from workstations 1 and 3) = 6. However, since the question asks for the number of completed items that the line can assemble, we need to combine the completed items from all workstations. Therefore, the correct answer is C) 12 (i.e. 6 completed items from each workstation added together).

An Assembly Line Consists of Three Workstations (WS)with Each Station's