Consider the process model in Fig. 7.14. This model captures a simplified process for handling applications for mortgages. There are two checks involved. CT1 deals with a check of the financial coverage of the mortgage application. The second check, CT2, concerns the verification of the property that is to be mortgaged. If the result of both checks is positive, the application is accepted (task AC). On average, after the execution of task CT1, 20% of all applications are rejected. Meanwhile, task CT2 leads to 30% of further rejections. If either of the checks has an unsatisfactory result, the application is rejected (task AW). The arrival process is Poisson, with an average arrival of five cases per hour during business hours. For each task, exactly one dedicated resource is available. The processing time of every task follows an exponential distribution. The mean processing times for tasks CT1, CT2, AC, and AW are, respectively, 5, 4, 3, and 3 minutes. The wage of each resource is € 20 per hour. Business hours are from Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm. Resources are only available during these hours.

a. Determine the resource utilization of each resource.

b. Determine the average cycle time of the process.

c. Determine the cycle time efficiency of the process.

d. Determine the average number of mortgage applications that are being handled at any given point in time. Hint For this exercise, it might be convenient to use a combination of process simulation, Little’s law and flow analysis.