Consider the depicted process $($a simplified version$)$ that the Federal agency follows to approve visa for an applicant$/$immigrant seeking authorization to work.

The manager plans to dig deep to understand the entire process. By interviewing employees, he$/$she collects the following information:

It takes $90$ minutes to screen and evaluate an application. The screening and evaluation department has $6$ employees. The processing department processes and prepares permits in batches of $10,$ wherein the setup time required by the system is $10$ minutes and takes $15$ minutes per unit. The processing department has only $1$ employee $($Assume $8$ hours a working day.$)$

$1.$ What is the capacity of the process $($units: applications per day$)?[10$ pts$]$

$2.$ What is the bottleneck of this process? $[10$ pts$]$

$3.$ What is the utilization of the: $($i$)$ bottleneck step; $($ii$)$ non$-$bottleneck step? $[10$ pts$]$

$4.$ Evaluate each process intervention below and determine which one best improves this facility's processing capacity. $[10$ pts$]$

$($a$)$ Adding another employee at the screening and evaluation step $[10$ pts$]$

$($b$)$ Improving the technology to cut down the screening and evaluation time to $70$ minutes $[10$ pts$]$

$($c$)$ Perform processing and preparation steps in batches of $20($new setup time $=18$ minutes$)[10$ pts$]$

$($d$)$ Invest in technology to reduce processing and preparation time per unit from $15$ minutes to $13$ minutes $[10$ pts$]$

$(5)$ Suppose now that $20\%$ of the screened applications are rejected and leave the system without being processed in the processing department. That is$,$ the processing department processes and prepares permits for only $80\%$ of the arriving applications. Then, how many applications can exit the facility per day? $[20$ pts$]$