A manufacturing company uses three processes to make its two products, X and Y. The time available on the three processes is reduced because of the need for preventative maintenance and rest breaks.
The table below details the process times per product and daily time available:
Process Hours available Hours required Hours required
per day to make one unit to make one unit
of product X of product Y
1 22 1·00 0·75
2 22 0·75 1·00
3 18 1·00 0·50
Daily demand for product X and product Y is 10 units and 16 units respectively.
Which of the following will improve throughput?
Throughput is determined by the bottleneck resource. Process 2 is the bottleneck as it has insufficient time to meet demand.
The only option to improve Process 2 is to improve the efficiency of the maintenance routine. All the other three options either increase the time available on non-bottleneck resources or increase demand for an increase in supply which cannot be achieved.