DMS201 Module-3
Set-1: Capacity Planning
1. A dental clinic specializes in cleaning customers’ teeth for decades. The process for a basic
dental cleaning is relatively straightforward: (1) the customer checks in (2 minutes); (2) a lab
technician takes and develops X-rays (2 and 4 minutes, respectively); (3) the dentist examines
the X-rays (5 minutes) while the hygienist cleans the teeth (24 minutes); (4) the dentist meets
with the patient to poke at a few teeth, explain the X-ray results, and tell the patient to brush
and floss more often (8 minutes); and (5) the customer pays and books her next appointment
(6 minutes). A flowchart of the customer visit is shown below. The dentist wants to obtain
capacity and throughput time of the clinic and identify the bottleneck.
Ans: 2.5 patients/hour, 46 minutes, Hygienist cleaning.
2. Smart Manufacturing Corp. has the process displayed below. The drilling operation occurs
separately from and simultaneously with the sawing and sanding operations, i.e., one part of
the product undergoes drilling while another part undergoes sawing and sanding and then the
parts are welded together. The product needs to go through only one of the three (parallel)
assembly operations. Determine the monthly capacity of the workshop assuming 8 working
hours per day and 22 working days per month. What is the throughput time? Which operation
is the bottleneck? If an identical parallel setup is created for the bottleneck operation, what
are the new capacity, new throughput time, and new bottleneck?
Ans: 391.1 units/month, 133 minutes, Drilling, 406.2 unit/month, No change, Assembly.
Collated by Dr. Avijit Khanra
3. We need to design an assembly line for the tasks given in the table below with a capacity
requirement of 5 per hour. Answer the following questions:
Task A B C D E F G H I
Processing 10 11 5 4 11 3 7 11 3
time (minutes)
Immediate -- A B B A C, D F E G, H
predecessor
i. Draw a network diagram representing the precedence relations.
ii. What is the minimum number of workstations needed?
iii. Solve the problem using the heuristics discussed in the class.
iv. Solve the problem using a heuristic that gives higher priority to the task having a larger
number of following tasks. The following tasks for task-𝑖 are those that require task-𝑖 as
a predecessor (immediate as well as non-immediate).
Ans: --, 6 stations, {(𝐴), (𝐵), (𝐶, 𝐷, 𝐹), (𝐸), (𝐻), (𝐺, 𝐼)} for all three heuristics.
4. A production facility assembles inexpensive telephones on a production line. The assembly
requires 15 tasks with precedence relations shown in the network diagram below. The task
times (in minutes) appear next to the task nodes in the network diagram.
a) Solve the line balancing problem using the ranked positional weight technique with a
cycle time requirement of 30 minutes. What is the line efficiency?
b) Is there a solution with the same number of stations you found in (a) but with a lower
cycle time? What is the minimum such cycle time?
c) If we relax the cycle time requirement, when will the number of stations decrease from
that in (a)? What is the per hour shortfall in capacity?
Ans: {(1,2,3,6), (4,5,7,9), (8,10,11,12), (13,14,15)}, 86.2%, Yes, 27 minutes, At the cycle
time requirement of 35 minutes, 2⁄7 units per hour.
Collated by Dr. Avijit Khanra