Question

During peak times, customers arrive at the Showcase SuperLux Theater at a rate of 180 per hour. All customers who enter the theater purchase tickets, but only 85% of customers purchase refreshments. Recall that the processing time for a ticket purchase is 0.75 minutes per customer and that the processing time for a refreshment purchase is 3 minutes per customer. Assume that 2 employees work the ticket booths and 8 employees work the concession stand.

Required:
a. Compute the implied utilization of the resources at the ticket booths and concession stand.
b. What is the flow rate of customers through this process (in customer per hour)?
c. Assume 1 resource is added to the ticket booths. What is the new flow rate of customers through the process (in customers per hour)?

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

The computation is shown below:

a) utilization is

= customer per hour ÷ number of booths × service rate

For ticket counter

= 180 ÷ 2 × (1 ÷ .75)

= 180 ÷ 2 × 1.33

= 67.67

= 68 %

For refreshment counter

= 180 × 0.85 ÷ 8 × (1 ÷ 3)

= 153 ÷ 2.64

= 57.95

= 58%

b)capacity is

= no. of resources ÷ processing time

= 2+8 ÷ 45+180

= 10 ÷ 225

= 0.044

= 0.04 customer per second

= 144 customer per hour

The flow rate of customer per hour is 144 customer

c) 1 resource added to ticket booth is

= 11 ÷ 225

= 0.048

= 176 customer per hour