You and your roommate have timed the necessary physical operations. The first physical production step is to wash out the mixing bowl from the previous batch, add all of the ingredients, and mix them in your food processor. The mixing bowls hold ingredients for up to three dozen cookies. You then dish up the cookies, one dozen at a time, onto a cookie tray. These activities take six minutes for the washing and mixing steps, regardless of how many cookies are being made in the batch. That is, to mix enough dough and ingredients for three dozen cookies takes the same six minutes as one dozen cookies. However, dishing up the cookies onto the tray takes two minutes per tray. The next step, performed by your roommate, is to put the cookies in the oven and set the thermostat and timer, which takes about one minute. The cookies bake for the next 9 minutes. So total baking time is 10 minutes, during the first minute of which your roommate is busy setting the oven. Because the oven only holds one tray, a second dozen takes an additional 10 minutes to bake.
Your roommate also performs the last steps of the process by first removing the cookies from the oven and putting them aside to cool for five minutes, then carefully packing them in a box and accepting payment. Removing the cookies from the oven takes only a negligible amount of time, but it must be done promptly. It takes two minutes to pack each dozen and about one minute to accept payment for the order.
A. What is the bottleneck? What is the flow rate?
Here are my answers:
Washing & Mixing – Flow time is 6 minutes – Flow rate is 12/6 = 2 cookies/min
Spooning the cookies – Flow time is 2 minutes – Flow rate is 12/2=6 cookies/min
Putting cookies in oven & setting Thermostat – Flow time is 1 minutes – Flow rate is 12/1= 12 cookies/min
Cooking cookies – Flow time is 9 minutes – Flow rate is 12/9= 1.333 cookies/min
Cool Down – Flow time is 5 minutes – Flow rate is 12/5= 2.4 cookies/min
Packaging them – Flow time is 2 minutes – Flow rate is 12/2= 6 cookies/min
Accepting payment – Flow time is 1 minutes – Flow rate is 12/1= 12 cookies/min
So the bottleneck is minimum of my resouces so that would be cooking cookies at 1.333 cookies/min
To determine the bottleneck in a process, you need to identify the step that has the lowest flow rate. The flow rate is the number of items or units processed per unit of time. In this case, the flow rate is measured in cookies per minute.
Let's calculate the flow rate for each step:
1. Washing & Mixing: Flow time is 6 minutes to process one batch, which contains 12 cookies. So the flow rate is 12 cookies divided by 6 minutes, which equals 2 cookies per minute.
2. Spooning the cookies: Flow time is 2 minutes to spoon one dozen cookies onto a tray. So the flow rate is 12 cookies divided by 2 minutes, which gives us 6 cookies per minute.
3. Putting cookies in the oven & setting Thermostat: Flow time is 1 minute to put one tray of cookies in the oven and set the thermostat. So the flow rate is 12 cookies divided by 1 minute, which gives us 12 cookies per minute.
4. Cooking cookies: Flow time is 9 minutes for the cookies to bake. So the flow rate is 12 cookies divided by 9 minutes, which is approximately 1.333 cookies per minute.
5. Cool Down: Flow time is 5 minutes for the cookies to cool down. So the flow rate is 12 cookies divided by 5 minutes, which is approximately 2.4 cookies per minute.
6. Packaging: Flow time is 2 minutes to pack one dozen cookies. So the flow rate is 12 cookies divided by 2 minutes, which gives us 6 cookies per minute.
7. Accepting payment: Flow time is 1 minute to accept payment for one dozen cookies. So the flow rate is 12 cookies divided by 1 minute, which gives us 12 cookies per minute.
Based on these calculations, we can see that the bottleneck is the step with the lowest flow rate, which is cooking the cookies at approximately 1.333 cookies per minute. This means that the rate at which the cookies can be cooked is the limiting factor in the overall process flow.