Group technology and processing cycle efficiency Ray Brown’s company, Whisper Voice Systems, is trying to increase its processing cycle efficiency

Group technology and processing cycle efficiency Ray Brown’s company, Whisper Voice Systems, is trying to increase its processing cycle efficiency (PCE). Because Ray has a very limited budget, he has been searching for a way to increase his PCE by using group technology. One of Ray’s manufacturing managers, Maria Lopez, has been studying group technology and claims that with minimal cost that includes downtime in the operation, she can rearrange existing machinery and workers and improve PCE. Ray is quite sceptical about this and decides to allow Maria to rearrange a small part of his operation. For Ray to be satisfied, he has stated that PCE must increase by 12%. PCE data before and after the rearrangement is as follows:

TIME CATEGORY                     BEFORE REARRANGEMENT                AFTER REARRANGEMENT

Inspection                                            30 minutes                                          15 minutes

Moving                                                45 minutes                                          10 minutes

Processing                                           70 minutes                                          30 minutes

Storage                                                55 minutes                                          20 minutes