Home Depot sets up a temporary team to assemble emergency relief kits to be sold before hurricane. The team uses the following four-step process to assemble the kits. Step 1 involves assembling material for the kit. Step 2 involves testing the material in the kit to ensure that it is defect-free and uncontaminated. Step 3 involves sealing the kit. Step 4 involves attaching an RFID tag for traceability. There is a storage bin between any two consecutive steps to hold work-in-process inventory. Each storage bin can hold as many kits as needed.

The process time for each worker and the number of workers at each of the four stations are given below. Workers work independently and in parallel.

Step 1 15 mins/kit 2 workers

Step 2 30 mins/kit 3 workers

Step 3 8 mins/kit 2 workers

Step 4 3 mins/kit 1 worker

A regular work day is from 8am to 4pm. All workers report to work at 8am. The workers in Step 1 leaves at 4pm every day. The workers in the other steps stay as long as it takes to process all the kits for the day. Whenever there are kits being processed in a step, all workers in this step stays at work. Each worker is paid at $10/hour during regular hours between 8am to 4pm, and $15/hour for overtime after 4pm. A fraction of an hour is paid as a whole hour.

The demand of the kit is very high, and Home Depot only processes as much as it can with the current schedule.

1. Assume all workers are cross-trained to perform each step at the speed listed on page 2. Can you re-assign workers to improve the capacity of the four-step process? What is the highest possible capacity that can be achieved with the current team of 8 workers? How would you assign workers to each step? Please note that each worker can be assigned to only one job throughout the day, and multi-tasking is not allowed.