In their Portland, Oregon facility, Wavy Wood Works several types of wood bowls from coastal driftwood. To make a bowl the first step is to clean driftwood. Each piece of driftwood makes a single bowl. There is one cleaning machine. It takes 40 seconds to load each piece of wood and the machine can hold up to 35 pieces. Once the wood is cleaned, 15 skilled artisans carve the bowls, each one takes on average 100 minutes to produce each bowl. After carving bowls are finished with a stain. It takes 30 seconds to load each bowl into stain machine. The staining machine holds up to 35 bowls. Once all of the bowls are loaded, they are soaked for minutes. After staining, bowls are unloaded onto drying racks. There is plenty on the drying racks. a. What is the maximum capacity (bowls per hour) of this process? bowls per hour
b. Suppose Wavy wants to operate with the same number of bowls in each batch that is cleaned or stained. For example, if they clean in batches of 30, then they stain in batches of 30 as well. What batch size in bowls minimize their inventory while allowing the process at the maximum flow rate? bowls per batch