IDS 532 Midterm

Fall 2015

October 8, 2015 Time allowed: 120 minutes

EXAM CONDITIONS

• Answer all questions completely. In order to qualify for any partial credit, show how you
arrived at your answer

• Multiple choice questions have only one correct option and a brief justification is required
for your choice to receive credit

• The exam is open-book/open-notes

• Laptops allowed to access offline class content but no internet/intranet access is allowed.

• By signing my name at the bottom of this document, I agree to the following condition:
I will not communicate with any other individuals while completing this exam. I will not
cooperate with anyone else while completing this exam including sharing answers or discussing
the problems in any way.
Failure to abide by this condition will imply a violation of the Honor Code of University of
Illinois at Chicago and will subject violators to the consequences stated under violations of
the Honor Code in the UIC Student Handbook.

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Good luck!

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1. (2 points) Which of the following best describes the flow time?

(a) Average time between completions of successive units

(b) Can be no more than 60 minutes
(c) Average time a unit spends in the process/activity from beginning to end
(d) The same as utilization
(e) The labor content of the item being measured

Answer: (c). Why? (a) definition of cycle time, (b) makes no sense, (d) utilization has no
units and is the fraction of capacity used, and (e) labor content is total time resource spend
working on an item, which does not account for the time the unit may have spent in the
system not being worked on.

2. (2 points) (d) For a multi-activity process, if the first activity is the bottleneck and it is
running at its capacity without stopping, you may add a buffer after the first station to
improve the system capacity.

(a) True
(b) False

Answer: False. It is the processing rate of the bottleneck activity that is preventing the
process from running at a higher capacity. Therefore, adding a buffer after the bottleneck
will help.

3. (2 points) Consider the following three process designs to organize a call center with 12
employees. The center handles calls for two customer types. Type 1 customers call with
credit card related questions and type 2 customers call with questions related to the online
account opening. On a busy day the call center receives 60 calls per hour from type 1
customers and 30 calls per hour from type 2 customers. It takes on average 2 minutes to
service both kinds of calls.

Process design 1: 6 employees handle type 1 calls; the other 6 employees handle type 2
calls
Process design 2: 8 employees handle type 1 calls; 4 employees type 2 calls.
Process design 3: 12 persons (cross-trained) handle all calls.

Which of the three process designs leads to the shortest (longest) average waiting time for a
random incoming request?

(a) 1 is the shortest, 2 is the longest

(b) 2 is the shortest, 1 is the longest
(c) 2 is the shortest, 3 is the longest
(d) 3 is the shortest, 1 is the longest
(e) 3 is the shortest, 1 and 2 are the same
(f) None of the above

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 Answer: (d). In process design 3, there is really only one queue regardless of which type of
customer. This leads to the shortest waiting time due to pooling. The remaining two process
designs have two queues for each customer. Process design 2 is better than design 1 because
it allocates number of employees proportionately to average demand.

4. (2 points) Which of the following best reflects pooling capacity to reduce restroom queue
lengths?

(a) Add more toilets to increase capacity.

(b) Install a flexible partition that can alter the size of the womens and the mens restrooms.
(c) Convert the separate mens and womens rooms into a single unisex restroom (that both
men and women can use).
(d) Remove mirrors in the restroom to decrease the time users spend in the restroom.
(e) Add automatic flush capability to each toilet to decrease processing times.

Answer: (c) because we are pooling the queues to the men’s and women’s restrooms. (Tests
concepts on slides 32 and 35 of the Variability and Impact on Performance lecture.)

5. (2 points) The following four graphs (labeled A,B,C and D in the bottom left corner) display
the number of customers in a queuing system (y-axis) over a long period of time (x-axis).
Which of the following is most likely a stable system?

(a) Only A
(b) Only B
(c) Only C
(d) Only D
(e) None of them
(f) All of them

(A) (B)

Answer: (d) because it exhibits the least upward trend. (Based on the discussion on Slide 29
of the Variability and Impact on Performance lecture.)

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 (C) (D)

6. (2 points) In a speech by John E. Pepper, former CEO of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the
following observation was made:
“Efficient Replenishment is basically just-in-time inventory management We eliminated excess
inventory.. But we also discovered some other benefits, as well. Perhaps the most surprising
was that this strategy increased product freshness.”
For the purpose of answering this question, just-in-time is just a strategy to reduce inventory.
Details are irrelevant. Assume that P&Gs total sales (flow rate) did not change. Please
briefly justify Mr. Peppers argument that decreasing inventory will result in greater product
freshness.
Answer: By Littles Law, Flow time =Inventory /Flow rate. If P&Gs inventory decreases but
flow rate remains unchanged, then the flow time through P&G must decrease, which implies
greater freshness.

7. (3 points) Strohrmann, a large-scale bakery in Pennsylvania, is laying out a new production

process for their packaged bread, which they sell to several grocery chains. It takes 12 minutes
to bake the bread. How large an oven is required so that the company is able to produce 4,000
units of bread per hour (measured in the number of units that can be baked simultaneously)?
Answer: The bread needs to be in the oven for 12 minutes (flow time). We want to produce
at a flow rate of 4000 breads per hour, or 4000/60=66.66 breads per minute. Inventory =
Flow rate * Flow Time = 66.66 breads/minute * 12 minutes Thus, Inventory = 800 breads,
which is the required size of the oven.

8. (7 points) Pancheros restaurant has two items on their menu: Fajitas and Quesadillas. The
serving process is as following: customers form two lines to order the food (ORDER), wait for
the food to be packaged (PACKAGE), make payment (PAY), and fill their drinks and take
fork and napkins (FILL). Since customers dont have a choice of meat and vegetable when
they order Quesadillas, the PACKAGE stage for Quesadillas is shorter than for Fajitas. The
restaurant serves dinner from 6 to 9 pm. From 6 to 8 pm, 60 customers per hour order Fajitas
and 40 customers per hour order Quesadillas. From 8 to 9 pm, 40 order Fajitas and 30 order
Quesadillas. The processing rates are specified in the process flow diagram:

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 (a) (3 points) Calculate the implied utilization of each activity during peak time (6-8pm).
Where is the bottleneck?
Answer: Implied utilization = demand/capacity. Order: 100/120 = 83.3%, Fajita pack-
age: 60/48 = 125% (bottleneck), Quesadilla package: 40/60 = 66.7%, Pay: 100/95=105.2%,
Fill: 100/150 = 66.7%.
(b) (4 points) Draw an inventory buildup diagram. At what time would the last customer
leave the system?
Answer:

9. (9 points) Furniture Face Lift refinishes old wood furniture. Their process for refinishing
chairs has 8 workers and 4 stations. Each chair starts at the Stripping station, then goes to
Priming, then to Painting and finally to Inspection. Where there are multiple workers within
a station, each worker works independently on his/her own chair. Assume inventory buffers
are allowed between each station.
Processing time
Station Staffing (hours per chair per worker)
Stripping 3 2.5
Priming 2 1.5
Painting 2 1.75
Inspection 1 0.8

(a) (3 point) What is the maximum number of chairs per hour that can be produced?
Assume they start the day with inventory at each station to work on.
Answer: Capacity=staffing/activity time. The average time needed to finish one chair
at each station are as follows: Stripping = 1.2 chairs/hr; Priming = 1.3333 chairs/hr;
Painting = 1.1429 chairs/hr; Inspection = 1.25 chairs/hr. Painting is the bottle neck
since it has the lowest capacity. The process capacity is the capacity of the bottleneck.
Thus, the process capacity is 1.14 chairs/hour.

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 (b) (3 point) Suppose at the start of the day there is no inventory of chairs in the shop.
That is, there are no chairs within any of the stations or between them in any buffer.
A truck loaded with 15 chairs arrives. How many hours will it take them to complete
these 15 chairs?
Answer: It takes 2.5+1.5+1.75+0.8=6.55 hours for the first chair to be produced. It
takes 1/1.14 hours for each of the subsequent chairs. In total, it takes 6.55+14/1.14=18.8
hours to complete 15 chairs.
(c) (3 points) Suppose now that each worker is trained to do all tasks and each worker works
on a chair from start to finish, i.e., each worker does Stripping, Priming, Painting and
Inspection. What is the maximum capacity of the process in chairs per hour?
Answer: In this system, there will be no bottle neck, i.e., every worker is working at
their full capacity. It takes each worker 2.5+1.5+1.75+0.8=6.55 hours to finish one
chair. 3+2+2+1=8 works can complete 8/6.55=1.22chairs/hour.
10. (9 points) One laptop manufacturer produces laptops in three steps. In the first step, the
base parts (the parts with keyboards) are assembled. In the second step, the LCD screens are
put on. In the third step, the assembled laptops are put into packages. In the base assembly
step, the process time is 10 minutes/unit. In the LCD screen assembly step, the process time
is 6 minutes/unit. However, after operating for 4 hours, the LCD assembly machine must be
shut down for 1 hour to cool down. In the packaging step, the process time is 5 minutes/unit.
(a) (2 points) What is the production capacity of each step (units/ hour) in isolation from
other stations?
Answer: The Base Assembly: 60/10 = 6 units/hr; The LCD Assembly: (4*60/6)/(4+1)
= 8 units/ hr; The Packaging: 60/5 = 12 units/hr.
(b) (2 points) If there are sufficient inventory buffers between stations, what is the bottleneck
and what is the long-run average system capacity?
Answer: Bottleneck is base assembly. Long-run average system capacity is equal to the
process rate of the bottleneck – base assembly. Therefore, the system capacity is 6
units/hr.
(c) (2 points) If there are no inventory buffers between stations, what is the long-run average
system capacity? (When there is no inventory between stations, the only place that one
station can put the unit it has finished is in the work area of the next station, and it
can do so only if the work area of the next station is empty.)
Answer: Since there are no inventory buffers, when the LCD assembly is shut down,
the base assembly cannot work because there is no place to hold. In 4 hours, the base
assembly can produce 4*6 = 24 units. Then it has to stay idle for 1 hour. The process
rate of the base assembly is 24/5 = 4.8 units/hr. Therefore, the system capacity is 4.8
units/hr
(d) (1 point) Management is considering adding storage space to the above process. Where
would you place the storage space?
Answer: Before LCD assembly
(e) (2 points) What is the minimal size of the storage space that maximizes outputs?
Answer: It should be large enough to hold the output of the base assembly when the
LCD assembly is shut down. So the storage should be 6*1 = 6.

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 For instructor use
Problem Score Max Possible
1 2
2 2
3 2
4 2
5 2
6 2
7 3
8 7
9 9
10 9
Total 40