Reference no: EM131740354

You are in charge of a quarry that supplies sand and stone aggregates to construction sites. Empty trucks arrive and wait in line for loading either sand or aggregate. At the loading station, they are filled with material, weighted, checked out, and then proceed to a construction site. Currently 9 empty trucks arrive each hour (on average). In addition to waiting in line, it takes 6 minutes for a truck to be filled, weighed and checked out. Concerned that trucks are spending too much time waiting and being filled, you evaluate the current situation and compare it to the 2 alternatives below. Alternative 1: Speed up the loading process and add side boards to the trucks so that more material can be loaded faster. This will improve the speed of loading, but cost $50,000. Since the trucks hold more, their arrival rate would be reduced to 6 per hour and the loading time would be reduced to 4 minutes each. Alternative 2: Add a second loading station at a cost of $80,000. The trucks would arrive at the current rate of 9 per hour. They would then wait in a common line and the truck at the front of the line would move to the next available loading station. Loading time at each of the stations is 6 minutes. Which alternative do you recommend?