Basil & Co: Orders Are Piling Up

Operations
easy35 min0 submissions
Google
Scenario

Basil & Co is a quick service restaurants operation in India. Demand is 1,207 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
Intake2,550 units/day
Processing747 units/day
Quality check1,627 units/day
Dispatch1,824 units/day

Other facts:

  • The plant manager has requested ₹5 Cr to upgrade the Dispatch stage, because that is where the visible backlog sits
  • Each additional unit shipped contributes ₹700
  • Overtime is available at any stage, at a premium

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

Supporting data

proposal

cost
5
stage
Dispatch

economics

contribution per unit
700

derived hints

bottleneck stage
Processing
system throughput
747
unmet demand per day
460
demand units per day1207

stage capacity units per day

intake
2550
dispatch
1824
processing
747
quality check
1627
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: Marlow Chemicals: Orders Are Piling UpNext 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