A bread-making factory has the production process shown in the figure below. There are five operations in sequence. The product only needs to go through one of the parallel machines in each case where parallel machines exist. What is the bottleneck time per batch of this process?
A) 50 min.
B) 60 min.
C) 35 min.
D) 30 min.
E) 20 min.

Question

A bread-making factory has the production process shown in the figure below. There are five operations in sequence. The product only needs to go through one of the parallel machines in each case where parallel machines exist. What is the bottleneck time per batch of this process? 
A) 50 min. 
B) 60 min. 
C) 35 min. 
D) 30 min. 
E) 20 min.

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

To find the bottleneck time, we need to find the longest time taken at each operation with the parallel machines taken into account. So, for the first operation, the product only needs to go through one of the parallel machines, and the longest time is 5 minutes. Similarly, for the second operation, the longest time is 6 minutes, for the third operation it is 4 minutes, for the fourth operation it is 10 minutes (since there is only one machine), and for the fifth operation it is 10 minutes.

The total time taken is 35 minutes, which is the bottleneck time. Therefore, the answer is C) 35 min.

A Bread-Making Factory Has the Production Process Shown in the Figure