Question: A final assembly plant for a certain automobile model is to have a capacity of 225,000 units annually. The plant will operate 50 wk/yr, 2 shifts/day,5 day /wk ,and 75 hr/shift . It will be divided into three departments:
(1) body shop,
(2) paint shop,
(3) trim-chassis-final department
The body shop welds the car bodies using robots, and the paint shop coats the bodies Both of these departments are highly automated. Trim-chassis-final has no automation. There are 15.0 hr of direct labor content on each car in this third department, where cars are moved by a continuous conveyor. Determine:
(a) hourly production rate of the plant and
(b) number of workers and workstations required in trim-chassis-final if no automated stations are used. The average manning level is 2.5, balancing efficiency = 90%, proportion uptime = 95%, and a repositioning time of 0.15 min is allowed for each worker.