A company manufactures a consumer product that involves 12 distinct production steps as shown below. The demand for this product is 2,700 per week and the manufacturing plant operates three eight-hour shifts five days per week. Each shift works 450 productive minutes.
a. Compute the takt time necessary to fill the demand of 2,700 within the time allotted.
b. What is the theoretical number of workstations for a balanced line?
c. Using the LOT criteria balance this line to a design cycle time equal to the takt time computed in part a.
d. Compute the projected efficiency of the line you designed in part c.
e. Identify the bottleneck(s).
f. Which station has the lowest efficiency? What could you do to improve this?