5 A farmer's market is considering the addition of bar code scanners at their check-out counters, which would use the UPC marked on all grocery packaging. Currently, the checkout clerk

keypunches the price of each item into the register during check-out. Observations indicate that an average of 50 items are checked out per customer. The clerk currently takes7 seconds per item to keypunch the register and move the item along the check-out table.On average it takes 25 seconds to total the bill, accept money from the customer, and make change. It then takes 4 seconds per item for the clerk to bag the customer's order. Finally,about 5 seconds are lost to transition to the next customer. Bar code scanners would eliminate the need to keypunch each price, and the time per item would be reduced to 3 seconds with the bar code scanner. (a) What is the hourly throughput rate (number of customers checked out per hour) under the current check-out procedure? (b) What would be the estimated hourly throughput rate if bar code scanners were used? (c) If separate baggers were used instead of requiring the check-out clerk to perform bagging in addition to check-out,what would be hourly throughput rate? Assume that bar code scanners are used by the clerk. (d) Determine the productivity index for each of the two cases in (b) and (c), using(a) as the basis of comparison and hourly customers checked out per labor hour as the measure of productivity.