A producer of inkjet printers is planning to add a new line of printers, and you have been asked to balance the process, given the following task times and precedence relationships. Assume that cycle time is to be the minimum possible.

Task Length
(minutes) Immediate
Predecessor
a 0.2 -
b 0.4 a
c 0.3 -
d 1.3 b, c
e 0.1 -
f 0.8 e
g 0.3 d, f
h 1.2 g

(a) Assign tasks to stations in order of greatest number of following tasks. Use the greatest positional weight as a tiebreaker rule.

Add the following parts:

(b) Assume now that an output of 240 units/day is desired for the 420-minute working day. What is the new calculated cycle time?

(c) What is the theoretical minimum number of work stations now?

(d) Use the new cycle time value from part (a.5) to assign tasks to work stations. Use the longest operation (processing) time rule to assign tasks with the greatest number of following tasks as a tiebreaker.

(e) Calculate the percent idle time value.