From the course: Process Improvement Foundations

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Solution: Balancing lines and flow

Solution: Balancing lines and flow

From the course: Process Improvement Foundations

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Solution: Balancing lines and flow

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- Okay, welcome back. I wonder what answer you came up with. Now this question, brings together the bottleneck idea with the idea of queues and it's worth understanding, because I think it's a microcosm of any operation, including probably yours. There are three ways to look at the question of how long it takes to get your lunch. The first way is from the point of view of the first person into the dining room. So they just go through all the stages, and it's a total of two minutes 35 seconds to get served. But I don't really care about them, because they're a special case. What about everyone else? It's not the same for them. So the second way to look at the problem is to imagine a conveyor belt. Everyone moves along once per minute. This is what happens when your trays are all sliding along on some rails. It takes you 20 seconds to get your soup, but you have to wait a whole minute before you can move along to…

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