A heat-treatment operation takes 6 hours to process a batch of parts with a standard deviation of 3 hours. The maximum that the oven can hold is 125 parts. Currently there is demand for 160 parts per day (16-hour day). These arrive to the heat-treatment operation one at a time according to a Poisson stream (i. e., with ca=1). a. What is the maximum capacity (parts per day) of the heat-treatment operation?
b. If we were to use the maximum batch size, what would be the average cycle time through the operation?
c. What is the minimum batch size that will meet demand?
d. If we were to use the minimum feasible batch size, what would be the average cycle time through the operation?