The White Tooth Device Company is a manufacturer of high-end electric toothbrushes. For each toothbrush, there are a sequence of assembly steps performed by five workers. Each worker does two tasks. Workers are paid $15 per hour. 

a. What is the labor content of a toothbrush (seconds)?

b. What is the cost of direct labor for a toothbrush ($)? 

c. What is the utilization (as a percent) of worker A? 

d. What is the average labor utilization of this process?

e. Suppose demand is 40 toothbrushes per hour. What is the takt time (seconds)?

f. Suppose the takt time is 50 seconds. What is the target manpower? 

g. Suppose one additional employee could be hired. The new employee can be assigned to the same set of tasks as one of the current workers. For example, the new worker could do tasks 1 and 2 (like worker A) or tasks 7 and 8 (like worker D). What would be the capacity of the process (toothbrushes per hour) after hiring the new worker? 

h. Suppose the company changes the assignment of tasks to workers to maximize its capacity. Each task is still assigned to one worker and each worker is still assigned consecutive tasks. What would be the capacity of the process (toothbrushes per hour)? 

i. Suppose the company changes the assignment of tasks to workers to maximize its capacity. Tasks can be assigned to multiple workers and workers can be assigned nonconsecutive tasks. What would be the capacity of the process (toothbrushes per hour)?

Transcribed Image Text:

Worker Task Time (seconds) A T1 40 A T2 25 T3 20 T4 15 T5 10 T6 15 T7 10 D T8 20 E T9 25 E T10 35