An emergency situation has occurred in the milling department, because the ship carrying a certain quantity of a required part from an overseas supplier sank on Friday evening. A certain number of machines in the department must therefore be dedicated to the production of this part during the next week. A total of 1000 of these parts must be produced, and the production cycle time per part = 16.0 min. Each milling machine used for this emergency production job must first be set up, which takes 5.0 hr. A scrap rate of 2% can be expected.
(a) If the production week consists of 10 shifts at 8.0 hr per shift, how many machines will be required?
(b) It so happens that only two milling machines can be spared for this emergency job, due to other priority jobs in the department. To cope with the emergency situation, plant management has authorized a three-shift operation for six days next week. Can the 1000 replacement parts be completed within these constraints?