Question

P/s: the redesign process should be redrawn 

A clinic devises the following examination process. The duration on the bottom is in minutes, the capacity on the right side of the square in patients per hour. a) Which activity is the bottleneck activity? b) What is the maximum capacity (patients per hour)? AAA 10 12 Nurse Nurse Physician Nurse Physician c) Redesign the process (combining tasks) so that the total capacity increases without changing the number of staff.

Answer 1

(a) Curreltly the activity 2 is bottleneck activity which has an output of 3.0 per hour.

(b) Bottleneck capacity is 3 per hour, which is the process capacity.

(c) UNder revised system, following arrangement can increase the process capacity ( assuming that the nurse can do any of the activities 1,2 and 4 and physicaian can do any activity 3 and 5.

3 nurses do the tasks 1,2 and 3 and 2 physicians do the tasks 3 and 5.

Procees capacity of nurses = 3 x60/(20+10+6) =5 per hour

Process capacity of physicians = 2 x 60/(18+12) = 4 per hour

The process capacity under thsi system will improve to 4 per hour from 3 per hour