(3.5 points) Consider a 4-station CONWIP line, where each station has a single machine with exponentially...

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(3.5 points) Consider a 4-station CONWIP line, where each station has a single machine with exponentially distributed effective process times with mean equal to t minutes. The underlying assumption is that the process capacity (max effective process rate or speed) of each machine is controllable and is set to the same value. WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 te(1) = t te (2) = t te(3) = t te(4) = t te(1) te(2) te(3) +H+H +HHHI +H THI te(4) a. What is the WIP level w and the value of t at which we should operate this line, to achieve a target average throughput rate TH = 15 jobs per hour with an average cycle time CT = 20 min per job? b. What is the resulting utilization of each machine? c. If you could increase the process capacity of only one machine by 10% to improve the TH and CT, which machine would you choose? d. If you kept the WIP level at the value of w found in part (a), and eliminated all variability from the machines so that their process times are constant and equal to the value of t found in part (a), what would the TH and CT of the line be? e. How would you change the WIP level w in part (d) to improve the performance of the line? (3.5 points) Consider a 4-station CONWIP line, where each station has a single machine with exponentially distributed effective process times with mean equal to t minutes. The underlying assumption is that the process capacity (max effective process rate or speed) of each machine is controllable and is set to the same value. WS1 WS2 WS3 WS4 te(1) = t te (2) = t te(3) = t te(4) = t te(1) te(2) te(3) +H+H +HHHI +H THI te(4) a. What is the WIP level w and the value of t at which we should operate this line, to achieve a target average throughput rate TH = 15 jobs per hour with an average cycle time CT = 20 min per job? b. What is the resulting utilization of each machine? c. If you could increase the process capacity of only one machine by 10% to improve the TH and CT, which machine would you choose? d. If you kept the WIP level at the value of w found in part (a), and eliminated all variability from the machines so that their process times are constant and equal to the value of t found in part (a), what would the TH and CT of the line be? e. How would you change the WIP level w in part (d) to improve the performance of the line?