This line consists of single-machine stations and is almost balanced (i.e., station rates are nearly equal). A manufacturing engineer has estimated the bottleneck rate to be 2000 cases per 16-hour day and the raw process time to be 30 minutes. The line has averaged 1,700 cases per day, and cycle time has averaged 3.5 hours.
a) What is the estimated average WIP level?
b) How does this performance compare to the practical worst case?
c) What would happen to the throughput of the line if we increased the capacity of non-bottleneck station and held the WIP at its current level?
d) What would happen to throughput of the line if we replaced the large single-machine at the bottleneck station with four smaller machines and held WIP at its current level? (The total capacity of the four smaller machines is equal to the capacity of the larger machine.)