Nimbus Health: Orders Are Piling Up

Operations
easy35 min0 submissions
Razorpay
Scenario

Nimbus Health is a digital health operation in US. Demand is 1,905 units per day and rising, but the site is not shipping it. Work-in-progress is accumulating and the plant manager is asking for capital.

The line has four stages, each with its own maximum rate:

StageCapacity
Intake1,977 units/day
Processing892 units/day
Quality check1,754 units/day
Dispatch1,346 units/day

Other facts:

  • The plant manager has requested $6 M to upgrade the Dispatch stage, because that is where the visible backlog sits
  • Each additional unit shipped contributes $686
  • Overtime is available at any stage, at a premium

The site director wants to know whether to approve the request.

Supporting data

proposal

cost
6
stage
Dispatch

economics

contribution per unit
686

derived hints

bottleneck stage
Processing
system throughput
892
unmet demand per day
1013
demand units per day1905

stage capacity units per day

intake
1977
dispatch
1346
processing
892
quality check
1754
Your task

Advise the site director. Your answer should provide:

  1. Analysis — what the site's actual throughput is and where the constraint sits, computed.
  2. Risks — what your answer depends on.
  3. Recommendation — where to spend, and the throughput it should buy.

State any assumptions you make.

Ready to move forward? Up next: Wavelength Media: Review This DCF Before It Goes to the ICNext question
How you'll be graded

100 points, 60% to pass.

  • root cause25
  • recommendation20
  • problem structuring25
  • quantitative analysis30
Hint
Reveal suggested structure

Stage capacities; theory of constraints; value of relieving the bottleneck; re-check the next constraint