1. How many minutes, on average, does it takes for a first-edition patron to get the requested...

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Question:

1. How many minutes, on average, does it takes for a first-edition patron to get the requested book from time of entry into the library? (State all assumptions and show the calculations.)

2. How many minutes, on average, does it take for the average library patron to get the requested book from time of entry into the library? (State all assumptions and show the calculations.)

3. How many patrons, on average, are there in the total library service delivery system? (State all assumptions and show the calculations.)

4. If the following numbers of employees work at each activity, what is labor utilization for each hob activity? Head librarian; two employees, 3 minutes per activity special librarian check in: three employees, 4 minutes per activity; first-edition retrieval; two employees 4 minutes per activity; original manuscript retrieval; two employees, 6 minutes per activity; and authors? journal retrieval; one employee, 6 minutes per activity.

5. What labor resource is the bottleneck?

6. What do you recommend to break the bottleneck(s)? Explain and justify your reasoning.

A rare book library at the university of Audubon in England house first edition (FE), original manuscript (OM), and authors' journals (AJ).

Some of these rare books are worth hundred thousand of dollar, and most are worth more than $5.000. People from all over the world visit the library to use its unique collection of rare books, they seldom if ever are allowed to remove books from the library. Only certified librations are able to collect the requested books and manuscripts from the bookshelves, as many of them are very fragile.

The rare book process involves the creation of value by the speed and reliability of the process (time utility); the safekeeping of human knowledge (place and information utility); the preservation of old books (form utility); and to some rare book experts the joy of seeing and reading the thoughts of people from different ages (entertainment utility). The output or out-come of the process is intangible ? no physical goods are created here?just information, entertainment, historical research, and knowledge transfer.

The goal of the librarian is to design a structured process with many check and balances to ensure the security of the rare books. Yet create professional service encounter. The process flowchart for examining rare books in a library is shown in Exhibit 7.13. Note the line of visibility that separates the front-office activities from the back-office activities. Here library patrons must follow a very small number of predefined pathways through the service delivery system. Customer have the little freedom or power to depart from the standard pathways and service encounter activity sequences; the process is highly repeatable; and management control is high.

Exhibit 7.13: Process flowchart for the University of Audubon Rare Book Library

Exhibit 7.14: Worksheet for the University of Audubon Rare Book Library Using Little?s Law.

Assume the throughput rate defined by Exhibit 7.13 is 40 library patrons per hour. All library patrons must remain in the visitor?s area until they register with one of the head librarians. On average, there are 10 people waiting in the visitor?s area. The head librarians verify that the patron has accounts in good standing with the library; this activity averages 3 minutes. After registering, the patron moves to a reference waiting area on average, 12 people are waiting to be serviced in this second waiting area.

A special librarian then takes the request from the patron and guides him or her to one of three smaller waiting areas in the library; first editions, manuscripts and authors? journals. This first special librarian activity averages 4 minutes and is the first of two activities carried out by the special librarians. One special librarian handles on customer at a time. One average, percent of patrons ask to see first editions, 40 percent ask for original manuscript and 10 percent ask for authors? journals. When patrons arrive at one of the three smaller waiting areas, they wait for the special librarian to perform the second activity, which is finding and retrieving the item.