Investigating the Effect of Pooling Resources-Three types of jobs arrive to a process at a rate that randomly varies between two and five jobs per hour; that is, the interarrival times are governed by a uniform distribution with mean equal to three and a half jobs per hour.

The process is currently configured in a way such that each arrival is sent to a team of specialists according to the type of job. Each team consists of three members. A team performs three activities in order to complete each job, and any team member can work on any of the three activities (A, B, or C). Figure 8.46 shows a flowchart of the process.

The arrivals are not equally likely for each job type. Typically, 30 percent of the jobs are type 1,35 percent are type 2, and 35 percent are type 3.

Processing times (in minutes) associated with the activities depend on the job type and are summarized in Table 8.9.

Management is concerned with the current performance of the process and is considering cross training the teams so team members can work on any job type.

a. Develop a simulation model of this process that can be used to model one day of operation; that is, one run of the model will consist of 8 hours of operation.

b. Use your model to assess performance with the following measures: cycle times, resource utilization, and overtime (the time needed to finish all jobs after the process closes). Simulate 10 days of operation to collect data for your analysis.

c. Assume that the teams are cross trained and that all nine people can perform any of the activities in the process. Compare this design with the original process using the measures in part b.