Consider the assembly line below.The three fabrication operations run in parallel,such that each batch of 20 units only needs to go through one of the three fabrication operations.After that,each batch needs to go through both assembly operations,which occur simultaneously (specifically,10 components are made for each unit in the fabrication stage-some components are then assembled in the Assembly 1 area while others are assembled in the Assembly 2 area).The units are packaged and made ready for shipment in the final stage. What is the bottleneck time per batch of this operation?
A)24 min.
B)8 min.
C)88 min.
D)34 min.
E)3 min.

Question

Consider the assembly line below.The three fabrication operations run in parallel,such that each batch of 20 units only needs to go through one of the three fabrication operations.After that,each batch needs to go through both assembly operations,which occur simultaneously (specifically,10 components are made for each unit in the fabrication stage-some components are then assembled in the Assembly 1 area while others are assembled in the Assembly 2 area).The units are packaged and made ready for shipment in the final stage.  What is the bottleneck time per batch of this operation?
A)24 min. 
B)8 min. 
C)88 min. 
D)34 min. 
E)3 min.

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The bottleneck time per batch is determined by the slowest stage of the process. In this case, the slowest stage is the assembly stage, as both Assembly 1 and Assembly 2 need to be completed before moving on to packaging. The time required for each batch to go through both Assembly 1 and Assembly 2 is the bottleneck time per batch.

Each assembly stage requires 10 components to be assembled per unit, and since there are 20 units per batch, there are a total of 200 components to be assembled per batch. Since both Assembly 1 and Assembly 2 operate simultaneously, the total time required for both stages is the maximum of the time required for Assembly 1 and the time required for Assembly 2.

Looking at the resource diagram, we can see that Assembly 1 takes 4 minutes per 10 components, while Assembly 2 takes 8 minutes per 10 components. Thus, Assembly 2 is the bottleneck stage, and the time required for both assembly stages to be completed is 8 minutes per 10 components or 16 minutes per batch.

Adding up the time required for each stage, we get:
Fabrication: 20 minutes (since only one of the three fabrication stages needs to be completed per batch)
Assembly: 16 minutes
Packaging: 4 minutes (since it can start as soon as assembly is complete)

Therefore, the total time required per batch is 20 + 16 + 4 = 40 minutes, and the bottleneck time per batch is 16 minutes spent in the assembly stage.

Consider the Assembly Line Below