A commercial bread bakery wants to evaluate its capacity, interms of how many kilograms of bread it can produce per hour. Asimplified version of the process is shown below:
In the mixing stage, all of the ingredients are combined to formthe dough.
| | |
Stage | Capacity(kg/hr/machine) | number of machines |
| | |
Mixing | 50 | 3 |
Proofing | 35 | 4 |
Baking | 20 | 5 |
Packaging | 65 | 2 |
The dough must then rise in a controlled environment called aproofing box or proofing oven, which monitors humidity andtemperature. Following the proofing, the bread is then formed intoloaves and baked. In the final stage, the bread is packaged priorto distribution to retail outlets. The bakery currently has thefollowing equipment:
- What is the current maximum output of the bakery inkilograms of bread per hour?
- Where is the bottleneck in the process?
- If an additional piece of equipment were purchased toincrease the capacity of the bottleneck, what would be the newcapacity?
