It is a real problem for us$,$ said Adelina, We now have only ten working days between all theexpense claims coming from the departmental coordinators and authorizing payments on the nextmonths payroll. This really is not long enough and we are already having problems during peaktimes. Adelina was the department head of the internal financial control department of ametropolitan authority in southern Sweden. Part of her departments responsibilities includedchecking and processing expense claims from staff throughout the metropolitan authority andauthorizing payment to the salaries payroll section.She had $12$ staff who were trained to check expense claims and all of them were devoted full$-$timeto processing the claims in the two weeks $(10$ working days$)$ prior to the deadline for informingthe salaries section. The number of claims submitted over the year averaged around $3,200,$ but thiscould vary between $1,000$ during the quiet summer months up to $4,300$ in peak months. Processingclaims involved checking receipts, checking that claims met with the strict financial allowancesfor different types of expenditure, checking all calculations, obtaining more data from the claimantif necessary, and $($eventually$)$ sending an approval notification to salaries. The total processingtime took on average $20$ minutes per claim.QUESTIONS$1)$ How many staff does the process need on average, for the lowest demand, and for the highestdemand?$2)$ If a more automated process involving electronic submission of claims could reduce the averageprocessing time to $15$ minutes, what effect would this have on the required staffing levels?$3)$ If department coordinators could be persuaded to submit their batched claims earlier $($not alwayspossible for all departments$)$ so that the average time between submission of the claims to thefinance department and the deadline for informing salaries section was increased to $15$ workingdays, what effect would this have?