Question

You are asked to analyze the kanban system of LeWin, a French manufacturer of gaming devices. One of the workstations feeding the assembly line produces part M670N. The daily demand for M670N is 1,750 units. The average processing time per unit is 0.005 day. LeWin's records show that the average container spends 1.100 days waiting at the feeder workstation. The container for M670N can hold 400 units. 16 containers are authorized for the part. Recall that is the average processing time per container, not per individual part. a. The value of the policy variable, a, that expresses the amount of implied safety stock in this system is 0.180. (Enter your response rounded to three decimal places.) b. Use the implied value of alpha from part a to determine the required reduction in waiting time if 2 containers were removed. Assume that all other parameters remain constant. The new waiting time is day(s) (enter your response rounded to three decimal places)

Answer 1

Answer a= Lead time to receive the material from the previous workstation = Average processing time per unit * number of units per container + Average waiting time per container

Lead time to receive the material from the previous workstation =0.005*400 +1.1 =3.1 days

L=3.1 days

Demand Rate, D = 1750 parts per day

Container size, C = 400

Number of containers, N = 16

Implied safety factor = N*C/(D*L) – 1 =16*400/(1750*3.1)-1 =0.17972

Answer b-= Desired Lead time, L = N*C/D/(1+s) =(16-2)*400/1750/(1+0.17972)

Desired Lead time, L=2.713

New waiting time=2.713 days