Question

A print shop runs a two-station binding line, in which the first station punches holes in the pages and the second station installs the binders. On average, the punch machine can process 15,000 pages per hour, while the binder can process 10,000 pages per hour. The shop receives work that requires both punching and binding at a rate of 8,000 pages per hour. It also receives work requiring only punching at a rate of 5,000 pages per hour. Which station is the bottleneck of this line and why?

Answer 1

Punching machine

Step-by-step explanation:

The computation is shown below:

Punching actual output = Both punching and the binding output + punching output

= 8,000 + 5,000

= 13,000 pages per hour

But the punching machine process to 15,000 pages per hour

Now the utilization rate of punching is

= 13,000 ÷ 15,000

= 0.867 pages per hour

Now for binding

The actual output is 8,000 pages per hour

Binder processing to 10,000 pages per hour

So, the utilization rate is

= 8,000 ÷ 10,000

= 0.8 pages per hour

As we can see that the utilization rate of punching is higher that results the bottleneck