Assignment:
Investigating the effect of rework rates—A proposed business process consists of five serial workstations. One caseworker is positioned in each workstation. The processing times at each workstation are exponentially distributed with mean values of 11, 10, 11, 11, and 12 min, respectively. The interarrival times are uniformly distributed between 13 and 15 min. The workstations have an unlimited queuing capacity, and it is assumed that the downstream transfer time is negligible. The unique aspect of this process is that between workstations 2 and 5, it is possible that the job will need to be reprocessed by the workstation immediately preceding the current one. For example, after workstation 3, it is possible that the job will be sent back to the queue in workstation 2. When this occurs, the transfer requires 3 min. The probability of rework remains the same regardless of the number of times a job is sent back for reprocessing. The rework probability is considered to be the same for all workstations and is currently estimated to be between 5% and 10%:
a. Develop a simulation model of this process that is capable of running 10,000 min of operation.
b. Run 10,000 min of operation for rework probabilities of 5%, 6%, 7%, 8%, 9%, and 10%. Collect cycle time data for each run.
c. Construct a plot of the average cycle time (y-axis) versus the rework probability (x-axis). Also construct a plot of the maximum cycle time versus the rework probability.
d. Assume that the processing times are constant. Run the simulation six times with the rework probabilities in part (b).
e. Construct plots of average cycle time and maximum cycle time versus the rework probability. Compare these plots with the ones obtained in part (c).
Provide complete and step by step solution for the question and show calculations and use formulas.