The Sylva Machine Shop was implementing lean throughout their shop floor and needed to determine the number of containers at several of their work centers. In one such work center, the demand was 475 parts per hour, and the containers they used for this part held 75 parts. It normally takes 5 hours for a full container to make a circuit through the work cell and back to its input side, and they desired to carry 10% safety stock in the system.

1. How many containers should the lean system be using?
2. Calculate the maximum system inventory for this part.
3. If the required safety stock was changed to zero, how many containers should the lean system be using, all else being constant?
4. Based on the required safety stock of zero and the number of containers computed in part c, calculate the maximum inventory for this part.
5. Based on the required safety stock of zero and the number of containers computed in part a, what would be the new required round-trip time, all else being constant?
6. If the demand from the original data was changed to 375 parts per hour, how many containers should the lean system be using, all else being constant?
7. If the required round-trip time from the original data was changed to 3.5 hours, how many containers should the lean system be using, all else being constant?