The Muppet Company makes Monster Cookies in several large commercial bakeries across the United States. The process is the same in all the bakeries and consists of mixing the cookie dough, forming the cookies (called base cakes), baking and cooling them. The cooled cookies are then iced and packaged. The packaged cookies are then shipped hourly to a company warehouse. As part of a continuous improvement program, Henson Sullivan, the operations manager in one of these bakeries, wondered if the production process could be improved. To understand the process, she took a pencil and clipboard and drew a value stream map of the cookie process.
Henson knew that the monthly production requirement was 12,000 cases. The bakery operated 20 days per month with one 8-hour shift per day with two 30 minute lunch break. Since the line is dedicated to Monster cookies, there is no changeover time or set up time and the current batch size equals one.
Step 1: Mixing the dough involves combining the flour, shortening, sugar and cocoa and mixing in batches. The processing time for one case is 50 seconds. There is two operator. Henson counted the inventory at the various storage locations and found ingredients for 1,200 cases of finished cookies before the mixer.
Step 2: Forming, baking and cooling are done by automated production machine operating continuously at the same rate. The machine is able to form, bake & cool 20 cases every 15 minutes. Currently, Muppet has only 1 machine. Henson counted 300 cases of mixed dough before step 2.
Step 3: Henson counted 60 cases waiting to be iced & assembled. Icing and cookie assembly are done in a single operation, with three operators. The cycle time is 12 seconds per case. Henson counted 600 cases before step 4.
Step 4: Finally, the processing time for packaging is 90 seconds per case. There is one operator and 60 cases waiting to be shipped.
The Sales department informs the Warehouse about sales forecasts. The Warehouse sends electronic forecasts and daily orders to Production Control. Production Control issues electronic purchase orders to the ingredient and packaging suppliers weekly but provides daily orders to each of the internal departments in the bakery.
a. What is the total process time in seconds for all 4 steps (round to the nearest integer)?
b. What is the total lead time in days (round to the nearest 1 decimal place)?