An industrial food processor needs to design a product layout for a new product, mint chocolate chip sandwiches. The company plans to use this new production line 8 hours a day to meet projected demand of 1,440 cases per day. The follow- ing table describes the tasks involved in the production of a mint chocolate chip sandwich.

a. Design this layout using the LPT decision rule and then repeat the design process using the SPT rule. What are the differences between the two designs? Which design is more efficient?

b. Suppose the food processor decides to implement the design created with the LPT rule. You have been hired to manage the production of mint chocolate chip sand- wiches and you have just learned there may be two errors in the data originally used during the design process. In particular, you discover that both task A and task C will probably require 3 seconds more to complete than originally planned. Which of these two mistakes in the duration data is the most troubling to you, and why?

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Task Immediate Predecessors Task Duration (sec.) B Am A 4 sec. A 14 C B 20 D B 12 E C, D 6 F E 8