Question

Students are going through a three-step process to obtain their ID cards.

Each student will spend 2 minutes at the registration desk before going to
one of three cashiers to pay a fee for the card. After that, he/she will visit one
of four ID processing stations to have his/her picture taken and the ID card
printed. Registration takes 2 minutes. Visits to the cashier and ID processing
station take 10 and 20 minutes respectively. If the demand rate is 0.5 student
per minute, which of the following conclusions can be drawn if resources are
doubled at the processing station?
A. The cashier station becomes the bottleneck.
B. There will be no bottleneck in the process.
C.The processing station becomes the
bottleneck.
D. Registration becomes the bottleneck.

Answer 1

The correct answer is both A and C

Step-by-step explanation:

Solution

Given that:

The Process 1 Registration, Capacity = 0.5 registration per minute (1/2)

The Process 2 Cashier, Capacity = 1*3 / 10 = 3/10 = 0.3 payments per minute

The Process 3 , Photo ID, Capacity = 1*4 / 20 = 0.2 ID per minute

Now

The Time taken for process a unit is minimum of Demand rate / Lowest process capacity

so, the flow rate = 0.2 student per minute or 5 minute per student

Thus,

The total time = 20 * 5 = 100 minutes.