Bryan Inc. produces a specialty top-quality juice machine. The product, the JM50, requires four processes to be completed. Specifically, these processes are exterior construction, pulp filter insertion, painting, and packaging. Each process is performed at separate workstations with different completion rates:
Exterior construction can manufacture 100,000 juicer exteriors per day.
Pulp filter insertion can install 25,000 filters every 6 hours.
Painting can decorate 3,000 juicers every half hour.
Packaging can package 5,000 juicers per hour.
The plant operates 24/7, 24 hours a day every day of the week.
What is the least amount of monthly capacity you would have to add to the bottleneck(s) to shift the bottleneck to a different process? (Assume an average 30-day month.)
A) 2,000,001 juicers per month.
B) 600,001 juicers per month.
C) 1,320,001 juicers per month.
D) 50,001 juicers per month.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The bottleneck is the painting process, which can handle 3,000 juicers every half hour, equating to 6,000 juicers per hour. Over a 24-hour period, this amounts to 144,000 juicers per day, and over a 30-day month, this totals 4,320,000 juicers. The next slowest process is pulp filter insertion, capable of handling 100,000 juicers per month (25,000 every 6 hours, equating to 100,000 per day, or 3,000,000 per month). To shift the bottleneck, the painting process's capacity must exceed 3,000,000 juicers per month. The difference between the current painting capacity (4,320,000) and the next bottleneck (3,000,000) is 1,320,000. Therefore, to shift the bottleneck, an additional capacity slightly above this difference is needed, making the correct answer 1,320,001 juicers per month.

Bryan Inc Produces a Specialty Top-Quality Juice Machine