WAC 2 – Kristen Cookie Case

Aedin Hunter Clay

Lance Andrei Tan

1. How long will it take you to fill a rush order?

Wash and mixing = 6 minutes
Spooning = 2 minutes
Warming Up and Baking = 10 minutes
Removing cooling cookies = 5 minutes
Packing = 2 minutes
Accept Payment = 1 minute

Time used = 6 + 2 + 10 + 5 + 2 + 1 = 26 minutes

2. How many orders can you fill in a night, assuming you are open four hours each night?

4 hours x 60 minutes = 240 minutes

One dozen = 6 + 2 + 10 + 5 + 2 + 1 = 26 minutes

Two dozen = 6 + 2 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 2 + 1
Three dozen = 6 + 2 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 2 + 1

This equation is based on the bottleneck which is the baking process that can only handle a
dozen per 10 minutes:

Maximum Number of Orders in a night

= (Working hours in a night – duration of initial batch) / Cycle Time + 1
= ((240 – 26) / 10) + 1 = 22.4 orders
= 22 orders

3. How much of your own and your roommate’s valuable time will it take to fill each
order?

Time spent by me
= 6 minutes (mixing and baking) + 2 minutes (spooning)
= 8 minutes

Time spent by roommate

= 1 minute (warming up and baking) + 2 minutes (packing) + 1 minute (accept payment)
= 4 minutes
4. Because your baking trays can hold exactly one dozen cookies, you will produce and
sell cookies by the dozen. Should you give any discount for people that order two dozen
cookies? Three dozen cookies, or more? If so how much? Will it take you longer to fill a
two-dozen cookie order over a one-dozen cookie order?
A single one-dozen cookie order will take 26 minutes to complete.
In a two-dozen cookie order, certain steps can be staggered or done simultaneously so that it nly
takes 36 minutes to complete the order.
- I mix 2 dozens for 6 minutes.
- I spoon the 1st dozen onto the tray for 2 minutes.
- My roommate places 1st dozen in oven and bakes them for 10 minutes. At the same time, I
spoon the 2nd dozen for 2 minutes.
- My roommate removes 1st dozen for cooling (time negligible) and places 2nd dozen into oven
to bake for 10 minutes.
- After 5 minutes, my roommate packs 1st dozen for 2 minutes, and 3 minutes later removes 2nd
dozen from then oven.
- After 5 minutes of cooling and 2 minutes of packing the 2nd dozen, 1 more minute is used to
accept payment for both dozens. The order has been completed in (6 + 2 + 10 + 10 + 8 = 36
minutes).
If these two dozens were separate orders, it would still only take 36 minutes to complete both
orders. I would have to do an additional 6 minutes of mixing, and my roommate would have to
do 1 more minute of accepting payment. However, both mixing and accepting payment can be
done while a batch of cookies is baking, adding no additional time. The same occurs during
orders of three dozen or more.
In an ideal situation, because two one-dozen orders and one two-dozen order can take the same
amount of time to complete, there should be no discount.
5. How many electric mixers and baking trays will you need?
One electric mixer is adequate for this process. One mixer already produces cookie dozens in 6
minutes, faster than the oven can process them.
Assuming that orders are produced optimally, a minimum of only two baking trays is needed.
There are four steps that require using a tray. These are spooning (2 minutes), baking (10
minutes), cooling (5 minutes), and packing (2 minutes). Because of this, each dozen cookies uses
a single tray for 19 minutes.
To ensure the next tray is ready to place in the oven immediately after the previous tray is
finished baking, we must start spooning cookies onto the next tray no later than 2 minutes before
baking is finished.
We can begin the spooning step on the first cycle 6 minutes after opening. The second cycle will
exit the oven at the 28 minute mark (8 minutes for initial mixing/spooning, 20 minutes for two
oven cycles). This means we can start spooning the third cycle as late as 26 minutes after
opening.
At maximum there is a (26-6) or 20 minute gap between the spooning step of the 1st cycle and
the spooning step on the 3rd cycle. Because a tray is only used for 19 minutes, the tray used in the
1st cycle will become available 1 minute before a tray is needed on the 3rd cycle.
This is why only 2 trays are needed. We can use one tray for the 1st, 3rd, 5th cycles, and the other
for the 2nd, 4th, 6th cycles, and so on.

6. Are there any changes you can make in your production plans that will allow you to
make better cookies or more cookies in less time or lower cost? For example, if there is a
bottleneck operation in your production process that you can expand cheaply? What is the
effect of adding another over? How much would you be willing to pay to rent another
oven?

The oven step is a bottleneck – it takes 10 minutes to process 1 dozen cookies, limiting
production to 6 dozens an hour. Using thinner cookies or a different recipe might make the
cookies bake faster, which would expand cookie production cheaply.
Adding an extra oven would be a more expensive way to increase production. It would increase
the baking step’s capacity to two dozen cookies every ten minutes. However, this would not
automatically double the overall production.
The cooling, packaging, and collecting payment steps can process two dozen cookies in (5 + (2 *
2) + 1) or 9 minutes, so this should not bottleneck the process.
The mixing and spooning steps are capable of matching the oven’s production of two dozen
cookies per ten minutes (6 minutes mixing, 2 minutes spooning per dozen). However, it can only
do this if both the cookie dozens contain the same ingredients. If each dozen contains different
ingredients, it will take 16 minutes to mix and spoon them both, making these steps the new
bottleneck. For this reason, discounts should be given to orders of two dozen cookies, so that
production can be maximized.
For the worst-case scenario of a 16-minute bottleneck:
= ((240 – 26) / 16) + 1 = ~14 orders of two dozen cookies, or 28 dozens
This is a 27% increase over the original maximum production of 22 dozens.

To calculate how much we’d be willing to pay for another oven, let’s look at how much
additional profits we could make. If we sell cookie dozens for $10.00 USD, we make around
$9.30 of profit per dozen. The worst-case scenario of 6 extra cookie dozens will produce $55.8
of extra profit per day.
A $3000 oven will pay for itself in just 54 working days, even in the worst-case scenario.
Because of this, $3000 is a reasonable price to pay for a new oven.