You are asked to analyze the kanban system of LeWin, a French manufacturer of gaming devices. One of the workstations feeding the assembly line produces part M670N. The daily demand for M670N is 1,800 units. The average processing time per unit is 0.003 day. LeWin’s records show that the average container spends 1.05 days waiting at the feeder workstation. The container for M670N can hold 300 units. Twelve containers are authorized for the part. Recall that p- is the average processing time per container, not per individual part.
a. Find the value of the policy variable, a, that expresses the amount of implied safety stock in this system.
b. Use the implied value of a from part (a) to determine the required reduction in waiting time if one container was removed. Assume that all other parameters remain constant.