Sola Communications has redesigned one of its core business processes. Processing times are not expected to vary significantly, so management wants to use the line-balancing approach to assign activities to workstations. The process has 11 activities, and the market demand is to process 4 jobs per 400 min working day.

Table 4.16 shows the standard time and immediate predecessors for each activity in the process.

a. Construct a precedence diagram.

b. Calculate the cycle time corresponding to a market demand of 4 jobs per day.

c. What is the theoretical minimum number of workstations?

d. Use the longest activity time rule as the primary rule to balance the line.

e. What is the efficiency of the line? How does it compare with the theoretical maximum efficiency?

f. Is it possible to improve the line’s efficiency? Can you find a way of improving it?