1. Mr.

K’s Hair Salon

Mr. K’s is a very popular hair salon. It offers high-quality hair-styling and physical relaxation
services at a reasonable price, so it always has unlimited demand. The service process
includes five activities that are conducted in the sequence described below. (The time
required for each activity is shown in parenthesis):

Activity 1: Welcome a guest and offer homemade herb tea. (10 minutes)
Activity 2: Wash and condition hair. (10 minutes)
Activity 3: Neck, shoulder, and back stress release massage. (10 minutes)
Activity 4: Design the hair style and do the hair. (25 minutes)
Activity 5: Check out the guest. (5 minutes)

Three servers (S1, S2, and S3) offer the services. The assignment of tasks to servers is the
following:

S1 does Activity 1.
S2 does Activities 2 and Activity 3.
S3 does Activities 4 and Activity 5.

Q1.1 Which server is the bottleneck of the process?

Q1.2. What is the average labor utilization of the servers? Assume the process operates at its
capacity.

Q1.3. Assume a wage rate of $18 per hour. Find the direct labor costs for one guest.

Q1.4. To increase the service rate, Mr. K’s is considering two alternatives:
Alternative I: To hire a new employee to help any one (and only one) of the servers without
changing the tasks performed by each server.
Alternative II: To redesign the assignment of tasks to servers. For this, Mr. K’s is evaluating
to reassign Activity 5 from S3 to S1.
What would be the costs of direct labor of serving one guest under each of the two
alternatives? Assume that the system operates at its capacity.
2. Power Toys

Power Toys produces a small remote controlled toy truck on a conveyor belt with 9 stations.
Each station has under the current layout, one worker assigned to it. Stations and processing
times are summarized in the following table:

Station Task Processing Times (seconds)

1 Mount Battery 75
2 Insert remote control receiver 85
3 Insert chip 90
4 Mount front axle 65
5 Mount back axle 70
6 Install electric motor 55
7 Connect motor to battery unit 80
8 Connect motor to rear axle 65
9 Mount plastic body 80

a. What is the bottleneck in this process?

b. What is the capacity, in toy trucks per hour, of the assembly line?

c. What is the direct labour cost for the toy truck with the current process if each worker
receives $15/hour, expressed in dollars per toy truck?

d. What is the utilization of the worker in station 2?

e. Because of a drastically reduced forecast, the plant management has decided to cut staffing
from nine to six workers per shift. Assume that i) the nine tasks in the above table cannot be
divided; (ii) the nine tasks are assigned to the six workers in the most efficient way possible
and (iii) if one worker is in charge of two tasks, the tasks have to be adjacent (i.e., one worker
cannot work on tasks 1 and 3).
- How would you assign the nine tasks to the 6 workers?
- What is the new capacity of the line (in toy trucks per hour)?

3. Consider the baggage check-in of a small airline. Check-in data indicate that from
9 a.m. to 10 a.m., 255 passengers checked in. Moreover, based on counting the number of
passengers waiting in line, airport management found that the average number of passengers
waiting for check-in was 35. How long did the average passenger have to wait in line?
4. COMFY SHOES INC

Comfy Shoes Inc builds shoes tailored to meet each individual customer’s needs. Customers
who visit the downtown offices of Comfy Shoes in Philadelphia can choose one or more of
the following four custom-tailoring services. Customers receive their shoes in the mail
within a week of their initial visit.

Service Description Time Resource used

A. Walking Basics Take measurements for basic 12 min. 1 attendant
walking shoes.

B. Walking Plus Choose specific design (e.g. 12 min. 1 attendant

material, color selection)

C. Running Basics Take measurements for tailor- 10 min. 1 attendant

made running shoes
D. Running Adv Consult physical therapist and 40 min. 1 attendant
obtain precise needs for running
shoes. Also choose specific
design.

The company offers the following packages to their customers:

1. Package 1: Includes only Walking Basics (Service A)

2. Package 2: Includes Walking Basics and Walking Plus (Services A and B).
3. Package 3: Walking Basics, Walking Plus and Running Basics (Services A, B and C).
4. Package 4: All four services (A, B, C, and D)

Customers of Comfy Shoes visit the store at a constant rate (you can ignore any effects of
variability) of 20 customers per day. Of these customers, 45% buy Package 1, 10% buy
Package 2, 20% buy Package 3 and 25% buy Package 4. The mix does not change over the
course of the day. The store operates 12 hours a day.

a. What is the implied utilization of the attendant in service D?

b. Which resource has the highest implied utilization?

c. At the end of the spring season, Comfy Shoes anticipates an increase in the demand to 50
customers per day. A change in the mix of packages demanded is also expected: 30% of the
customers ask for Package 1, 10% for Package 2, 10% for Package 3 and 50% for Package 4.
The company will hire an additional attendant to help with Service A (Walking Basics). What
will be the bottleneck in the process given this new demand pattern?

d. How many customers a day will not be served?

5. Old City Photographics

Located alongside a cobblestoned street in Old City, Old City Photographics (OCP)
specializes in the processing of the traditional 35mm negative film, a once dominant
photographic medium now in decline due to the popularity of digital photography. OCP
offers three packages to their customers. With the standard package, the customer gets a set
of 6”x4” prints for $19.99. The deluxe package adds to the standard package a CD-ROM of
high resolution scans of the pictures for $29.99. Finally, the $39.99 pro package is similar to
the deluxe package in that it comes with a CD-ROM, although the customer gets a contact
print rather than a set of prints. (A contact print is an 8”x10” sheet of photographic paper that
has all pictures on the roll of film printed next to each other at reduced dimensions and is
used as an index.) The workflow for OCP is shown below (s=standard, d=deluxe, p=pro):

OCP is operated by one person at every station.

Q5.1 On average, OCP receive 13 jobs per hour consisted of 44% standard, 37% deluxe and
19% pro. Which of the following statement best describes OCP’s process?
a. The process is demand-constrained
b. The process is resource-constrained and “process film” is the bottleneck
c. The process is resource-constrained and “scan film” is the bottleneck
d. The process is resource-constrained and “make 6”x4” prints” is the bottleneck
e. The process is resource-constrained and “make contact print” is the bottleneck

Q5.2 What is the implied utilization at “Scan Film”

a. less than 50%
b. 50% to 60%
c. 60% to 70%
d. 80% to 90%
e. 90% to 100%
f. more than 100%

Q5.3 Fixing the relative proportions of job types, what is the largest number of jobs per hour
that OCP can handle? Circle the answer closest to the correct answer.

a. 10 d. 13 g. 16
b. 11 e. 14 h. 17
c. 12 f. 15 i. 18