Bentley University GR 602 Business Process Management

Plates to Order

A new store, called Kate’s Plates, has just opened and its primary business is to
permanently mount photographs on glass plates. While mounting the photograph onto the
plate, you can get a message printed around the picture, and/or you can get the plate glazed to
bring out a nice finish. The mounting of the picture takes five minutes on average, the printing
takes on average about 10 minutes, and the glazing takes 28 minutes (5 minutes for someone to
brush glaze on the plate and put the plate in the oven, 8 minutes in the oven, and 15 minutes to
set after being taken out of the oven). Most customers who come into the store want to wait
for their plates to be done. About 40% of all jobs are only for the mounting photograph; 10%
are for mounting and printing; 30% for mounting and glazing; and 20% for mounting, printing,
and glazing.

There are three employees who work in the store for eight hours each day (with no
breaks). When a customer enters the store, Kate asks what services the customer would like.
She writes the information on an order sheet and places the order sheet and the photograph on
the back counter. Kate takes about 3 minutes to complete the order-taking step. Tracy mounts
the photographs on the plates. If glazing is required, Tracy brushes glaze on the plate and puts it
in the oven. Jennifer is the printing expert. If printing is required, it is done after the
photograph is mounted, but before the glaze is put on. There is only one oven and it can only
take one plate at a time. After a plate comes out of the oven, it goes on a drying rack (which can
hold 5 plates) before it can be given to the customer. When a plate is done, Kate packs the plate
into a box and processes the customer’s payment. Packing the plate takes 3 minutes and
processing payment takes 2 minutes.

Authors: Dennis Anderson and Bruce Murphy

 Bentley University GR 602 Business Process Management

Plates to Order

Data

Costs

Burdened
Resource Hourly Rate
Hourly Rate

Kate $30.00 $46.50

Jennifer $19.00 $29.45

Tracy $15.00 $23.25

Oven $2.00 $2.00

Hours of operation:

40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00AM to 7:00PM

Price List

Item Price

Mounted Picture $24.99

Printed Message $11.99

Glaze $19.99

Authors: Dennis Anderson and Bruce Murphy

Bentley University GR 602 Business Process Management

Plates to Order

Authors: Dennis Anderson and Bruce Murphy

 Bentley University GR 602 Business Process Management

Plates to Order

Hand draw a model of the Custom Plates process outlined above.

1) List the activities in your model in each row and complete the three columns for each
activity?

Activity Processing % of all Name of resource

time entities used

Authors: Dennis Anderson and Bruce Murphy

Bentley University GR 602 Business Process Management

Plates to Order

Authors: Dennis Anderson and Bruce Murphy

 Bentley University GR 602 Business Process Management

Plates to Order

Using the data from the table above. Calculate the usage time per order and capacity of each of
the resources

Resource Minutes Usage Capacity

Available per Day
(Minutes per Order) (Orders per Day)

Authors: Dennis Anderson and Bruce Murphy

 Bentley University GR 602 Business Process Management

Plates to Order

Order Type Percent Number $’s Order Daily Revenue

of
Orders

Photograph without glazing or printing $24.99

Photograph without glazing, but with $36.98

printing

Photograph with glazing, but not printing $44.98

Photograph with glazing and printing $56.97

Total 100%

Calculate the maximum daily revenue throughput as currently configured

Authors: Dennis Anderson and Bruce Murphy

 Bentley University GR 602 Business Process Management

Plates to Order

Answer the following questions.

o What is the customer throughput time for:

 Photograph without glazing or printing
 Photograph without glazing, but with printing
 Photograph with glazing, but not printing
 Photograph with glazing and printing

o Given the current demand mix what is the maximum daily revenue throughput
for Kate’s Plates?
o What one simple thing could you do to immediately increase the capacity of the
process?
 What is the impact of this on the total daily capacity of Kate’s Plates?

Authors: Dennis Anderson and Bruce Murphy