A hospital's copy office receives orders from managers for articles and other materials to be copied for in-house seminars. When the copy office receives an order, an employee reviews the order and sorts it into two groups: one of materials with copyrights and another of materials without copyrights. Two employees then look in the copy office's storeroom to see if any copyright materials remain from a previous seminar in on-hand inventory; what is not already in storage is ordered. Another employee photocopies the handouts that are not copyright-protected. When the photocopying is complete, the copied handouts are stapled. All materials, both with and without copyrights, are then drilled. Finally, two employees inspect the materials for conformance to specifications. This involves checking the photocopies against the manager's order, inspecting the drilled holes, assuring that the proper pages were stapled together in the correct sequence, collating the assembled articles and other handouts, and placing orders for the copyrighted articles that were not already on hand. Each task must be performed in the sequence given below. The hospital's copy office operates 8 hours per day.
Task Employees Assigned Task Time(minutes)
Review order; sort into materials with and without copyrights 1 15
Look in storeroom for copyright material already in on-hand inventory 2 15
Photocopy handouts without copyright 1 30
Staple handouts photocopied in house 1 10
Drill all on-hand materials 1 20
Inspection and placement of orders for unavailable copyrighted materials 2 45
A. What is the minimum possible throughput time of the order completion process in the copy office?
B. What is the cycle time of the order completion process in the copy office?
C. What is the hourly capacity of the order completion process in the copy office?
D. To bring in extra revenue, the hospital's copy office added a new service in 2016 - direct delivery of external customer orders to customers' workplaces (for a fee). The copy office's delivery record for 2016 showed that 65% of their customers received their completed order in 24 hours, another 25% within 36 hours, and another 10% within 45 hours. What was the copy office's average delivery time for 2016?
E. If each and every task in the order completion process at the copy office except "Review order" and "Look in storeroom" averages five percent scrap, what is the overall yield of completed orders?
F. In 2015, the hospital copy office's planned capacity for photocopying was based on 350 days per year of operation. However, copy machine breakdowns caused the copy office five unplanned days of downtime. What was the copy machine utilization in the hospital's copy office in 2015?