Question

Consider the following production process. The process consists of 34 steps and operates at a cycle time of 0.81 min/unit. Their most error prone operation is step 19. If each worker checks the work of the previous steps and there are on average roughly 182 units of inventory between step 19 and the end of the process, equally distributed across the remainder of the process, what is the average information turnaround time for a defect made at step 19 (in minutes)?

Answer 1

The average information turnaround time for a defect made at step 19 in a 34-step production process, with a cycle time of 0.81 min/unit and 182 units of inventory equally distributed over the remaining steps, is approximately 147.45 minutes.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student is asking about the average information turnaround time for a defect identified at step 19 in a production process consisting of 34 steps, with a cycle time of 0.81 min/unit. Since there are 182 units of inventory equally distributed across the remaining steps after step 19, we first need to determine how many steps are left after step 19. There are 34 - 19 = 15 steps remaining. Dividing the inventory equally across these steps, each step would have 182 units / 15 steps = approximately 12.13 units. We are interested in the average time it takes for information about a defect occurring at step 19 to reach the end of the process.

Since each unit takes 0.81 minutes to process and there is an average of 12.13 units per step, the time it takes for one step's worth of units to be processed is 12.13 units * 0.81 min/unit = approximately 9.83 minutes. To find the turnaround time, we multiply this value by the number of steps remaining which is 9.83 minutes/step * 15 steps = 147.45 minutes. This is the average information turnaround time for a defect made at step 19, meaning it takes on average 147.45 minutes for a defect to be detected and the information to travel through the remainder of the production process.