Reference no: EM133033892

Monica Summer, a student at FIU, found her allowance insufficient to meet her needs and wanted to make some money.  Living in a dormitory with 1200 other students, Monica and Michele, her roommate, had already established a dorm-wide reputation for baking fresh warm cookies. Monica conducted some market research and determined that there was sufficient demand in her dormitory to sell as many cookies as she could make at a price of $10.00 per dozen.  She would sell the cookies only in quantities of a dozen (12 cookies), although she baked 13 in each batch (a "baker's dozen") to allow for breakage.  The cookies just needed to be made to each customer's requirements in terms of ingredients and to be fresh from the oven. She decided to make four types of cookies: chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and deluxe chocolate chip or deluxe oatmeal raisin.  About 40% of customers wanted chocolate chip cookies, 35% wanted oatmeal raisin cookies, and 25% wanted deluxe chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies, which were chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies to which coconut and nuts were added.

Ordering - Monica enlisted Michele as her partner. They decided to take orders each day between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Customers could phone or stop by their dormitory apartment to place an order and would be informed of the time they could come by to pick up their cookies.  About half of their customers ordered by phone, which took an average of two minutes.  All phone orders were taken by Michele.  When customers came to the apartment, the order taking generally took longer - about six minutes. All in-person orders were taken by Monica.

Cookie Making - The cookie making process began at 8:00 p.m. and was relatively simple, consisting of several common steps for each type of cookie:  mixing, spooning, baking, cooling, and plating. Monica was responsible for steps prior to baking and Michele was responsible for steps after baking.

At mixing, which required five minutes per batch of one baker's dozen (13 cookies), the ingredients for the cookies were measured out into a bowl and mixed using a wooden spoon. Deluxe cookies required four additional minutes at the mixing stage. Monica had two bowls, each large enough to mix one batch of cookies.

At spooning, the cookie dough was spooned onto a cookie sheet. Monica had six cookie sheets, each large enough to hold 13 cookies. The spooning task took about 55 seconds. It took Monica five seconds to place the cookie sheet in the oven.

Baking, which took 10 minutes, was done in their electric oven.  The oven held only one cookie sheet.  Baking was a completely automated task and required none of Monica's or Michele's time.

Michele removed cookies from the oven and did a visual inspection as she placed them on the kitchen counter cooling area, which could accommodate five cookie sheets.  The removal from the oven and inspection took about one minute. Cookies required another five minutes to cool sufficiently for them to be removed from the sheets.  Cookies that cooled longer than ten minutes often broke, and although their customers did not complain about broken cookies because, as one customer noted, "they taste the same whole or in pieces," Monica and Michele wanted to sell only perfect-looking cookies. Removing the cookies from the cookie sheet and placing them on a paper plate took two minutes per dozen cookies.

Taking Payment - Customers picked up their cookies at Monica's and Michele's apartment door.  When customers came to pick up their cookies, Michele took their payment (cash only!), which took about two minutes, on average.

QUESTION:

What is the capacity of the order taking process?  Please show the work.