Assignment: Facility Layout and Capacity Planning
Back in the CEO asked you to forecast demand for the next 36 months in order to determine if leasing the building next door was a good investment. Now she needs to know how many production staff are needed, based on your forecast, to handle production operations if she pulls the trigger on the lease. Again, you could shoot from the hip and give her your best guess, but knowing that payroll is the largest single expense in your production department you reply, "let me run the numbers and I'll let you know in a couple of hours." This is what the wise operations manager would do.
In this unit, you will get the opportunity conduct capacity planning and scheduling analysis, and then solve problems using your results. In addition to scheduling and capacity analysis, you will learn the importance of facility layout with regards to maximizing production.
Learning Outcomes
a. Prepare a strategy for capacity planning for an organization.
b. Analyze the risks to an organization resulting from a poorly designed process flow.
c. Examine considerations for optimizing facility layout of an organization.
d. Evaluate the impact of facility layout on process efficiency and suggest changes to improve operational outcomes.
Directions
End of Chapter Problems: Answer the following end of chapter problems from the textbook:
Chapter 5 - problems 2, 6, and 12 (pages 217-219).
Task:
I. In a job shop, effective capacity is only 50 percent of design capacity, and actual output is 80 percent of effective capacity. What design capacity would be needed to achieve an actual output of eight jobs per week?
II. A real estate agent is considering changing her land line phone plan. There are three plans to choose from, all of which involve a monthly service charge of $20. Plan A has a cost of $.45 a minute for daytime calls and $.20 a minute for evening calls. Plan B has a charge of $.55 a minute for daytime calls and $.15 a minute for evening calls. Plan C has a flat rate of $80 with 200 minutes of calls allowed per month and a charge of $.40 per minute beyond that, day or evening.
i. Determine the total charge under each plan for this case: 120 minutes of day calls and 40 minutes of evening calls in a month.
ii. Prepare a graph that shows total monthly cost for each plan versus daytime call minutes.
iii. If the agent will use the service for daytime calls, over what range of call minutes will each plan be optimal?
iv. Suppose that the agent expects both daytime and evening calls. At what point (i.e., percentage of call minutes for daytime calls) would she be indifferent between plans A and B?
III. A manager must decide which type of machine to buy, A, B, or C. Machine costs are as follows:
|
Machine
|
Cost
|
|
A
|
$40,000
|
|
B
|
$30,000
|
|
C
|
$80,000
|
Chapter 6 - problems 1, 2, and 9 (pages 291-294).
1. An assembly line with 17 tasks is to be balanced. The longest task is 2.4 minutes, and the total time for all tasks is 18 minutes. The line will operate for 450 minutes per day.
i. What are the minimum and maximum cycle times?
ii. What range of output is theoretically possible for the line?
iii. What is the minimum number of workstations needed if the maximum output rate is to be sought?
iv. What cycle time will provide an output rate of 125 units per day?
v. What output potential will result if the cycle time is (a) 9 minutes? (b) 15 minutes?
2. A manager wants to assign tasks to workstations as efficiently as possible and achieve an hourly output of 33? units. Assume the shop works a 60-minute hour. Assign the tasks shown in the accompanying precedence diagram (times are in minutes) to workstations using the following rules:
i. In order of most following tasks. Tiebreaker: greatest positional weight.
ii. In order of greatest positional weight. Tiebreaker: most following tasks.
iii. What is the efficiency?
I. A shop works a 400-minute day. The manager of the shop wants an output of 200 units per day for the assembly line that has the elemental tasks shown in the table. Do the following:
i. Construct the precedence diagram.
ii. Assign tasks according to the most following tasks rule. Break ties with the greatest positional weight rule.
iii. Assign tasks according to the greatest positional weight rule. Break ties with the most following tasks rule.
iv. Compute the balance delay for each rule. Which one yields the better set of assignments in this instance?
|
Task
|
Immediate Predecessor
|
Task Time
|
|
a
|
-
|
0.5
|
|
b
|
a
|
1.4
|
|
c
|
a
|
1.2
|
|
d
|
a
|
0.7
|
|
e
|
b, c
|
0.5
|
|
f
|
d
|
1.0
|
|
g
|
e
|
0.4
|
|
h
|
g
|
0.3
|
|
i
|
f
|
0.5
|
|
j
|
e, i
|
0.8
|
|
k
|
h, j
|
0.9
|
|
m
|
k
|
0.3
|
Format your assignment according to the give formatting requirements:
a. The answer must be double spaced, typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
b. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the course title, the student's name, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
c. Also include a reference page. The references and Citations should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.