Answer to Question #292278 in Management for george2000

Question

The final assembly of electric generators at Electro is produced at the

Poisson rate of 10 generators per hour. The generators are then conveyed on a belt to the inspection department for final testing. The belt can hold a maximum of 7 generators. An electronic sensor will automatically stop the conveyor once it is

full, preventing the final assembly department from assembling more units until a space becomes available. The time to inspect the generators is exponential, with a mean of 15 minutes.

a. What is the probability that the final assembly department will stop

production?

b. What is the average number of generators on the conveyor belt?

c. The production engineer claims that interruptions in the assembly department

can be reduced by increasing the capacity of the belt. In fact, the engineer claims

that the capacity can be increased to the point where the assembly department can operate 95% of the time without interruption. Is this claim justifiable?

Answer 1

The employee performing final assembly of electric generators at Electro can produce generators at the Poisson rate of 10 generators per hour. The generators are then conveyed on a belt to an employee in the inspection department for final testing. The belt can hold a maximum of 7 generators (plus the final assembly department has an area to work on one generator). An electric sensor will automatically stop the conveyor once it is full, preventing the final assembly department from assembling more units until a space becomes available. The time to inspect generators is exponential with a mean of 15 minutes. a) What is the probability that the final assembly department will stop production? b) What is the average number of generators on the conveyor belt? c) (bonus 10 points) The production engineer claims that interruptions in the assembly department may be reduced by increasing the capacity of the belt. In fact, the engineer claims that the capacity can be increased to the point where the final assembly department can operate 95% of the time without interruption. Is this justifiable