Consider the process at a dry cleaning business.

As customers enter, they wait in line to give their clothing to a worker at the counter. The counter
worker then asks customer when the clothes need to be ready, inspects the clothing, tags each item of
clothing creates an order ticket, and gives the customer a receipt. The tag number on each item of
clothing corresponds to the number on the order ticket, so that the clothing is identifiable throughout
the dry cleaning process. In addition, if the counter worker finds a stain on the clothing, he marks the
stain with a piece of tape. At this point, the counter worker puts the clothes in to one of the three piles
based on the colour of the clothing: dark, beige or white. The tasks performed by the counter worker
comprise the order taking process. The first counter worker takes on an average three minutes to
process each order, and that on an average an order comprises of three items of clothing.

Next, the machine operator pretreats the stained clothing by washing the stains with a solution, making
sure to maintain the colour-based separation of the piles. While some clothes need no pre treatment
some requires a few minute. On average the time a machine operator spends on pretreatment is about
one minute per item. After clothes haven pre-treated as needed, they are loaded in batches of dark,
beige or white clothing in to the dry cleaning machine by the machine operator. Before clothes are
loaded on to the dry-cleaning machine, the machine operator needs to switch the machine’s tanks,
which hold the cleaning solvents, according to the colour of the load. If two successive loads are of
different colours, it takes five minutes to change the tanks. If they are of the same colour, the tanks
need not be changed. After switching tanks as needed, the machine operator loads clothes into the
machine. The maximum number of items that can be loaded at once is 150. Rather than wait for the
full load of items to accumulate, the operators loads about 90 items in each machine cycle. The process
of loading a batch of clothing, running the machine, and unloading the cleaned clothes takes 55 minutes.
Loading and unloading itself takes negligible time, and the machine can run unattended. Upon
completion of the machine process, the machine operator unloads each batch and passes the cleaned
clothing on to the pressing station. There are two pressers there who press the clothing using heavy
duty clothe presses and then passes on to the packer. It takes a presser about 2.5 minutes to press an
item of clothing. The packer combines all the items from an order and shrink wraps 40 orders per hour.
Finally, the packer hangs the order, which is now ready for customer pickup.

To pick up an order the customer present his receipt to a second counter worker who retries the order
and charges the customer. It takes three minutes to retrieve a customer’s order and charge the
customer. Assume 12-hours working per day, and 180 customers visit a day.

1) What are order winning criteria?

2) What is the capacity of the process?
3) How well is the capacity of the process being utilized?
4) How long does it take for an item or order to go through the process?