Question: Jobs arrive randomly at a particular assembly plant; assume that the arrival rate is five jobs per hour. Service times (in minutes per job) do not follow the exponential probability distribution. Two proposed designs for the plant's assembly operation are shown.

Service Time

Design Mean Standard Deviation

A 6.0 3.0

B 6.25 0.6

a. What is the service rate in jobs per hour for each design?

b. For the service rates in part (a), what design appears to provide the best or fastest service rate?

c. What arc the standard deviations of the service times in hours?

d. Use the MIGII model to compute the operating characteristics for each design.

e. Which design provides the best operating characteristics? Why?