CAT 2017 Slot 1 — DILR Question 4
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Healthy Bites is a fast food joint serving three items: burgers, fries and ice cream. It has two employees Anish and Bani who prepare the items ordered by the clients. Preparation time is 10 minutes for a burger and 2 minutes for an order of ice cream. An employee can prepare only one of these items at a time. The fries are prepared in an automatic fryer which can prepare up to 3 portions of fries at a time, and takes 5 minutes irrespective of the number of portions. The fryer does not need an employee to constantly attend to it, and we can ignore the time taken by an employee to start and stop the fryer; thus an employee can be engaged in preparing other items while the frying is on. However fries cannot be prepared in anticipation of future orders.
Healthy Bites wishes to serve the order as early as possible. The individual items in any order are served as and when ready; however, the order is considered to be completely served only when all the items of that order are served.
The table below gives the orders of three clients and the times at which they placed their orders:
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Suppose the employees are allowed to process multiple order at a time, but the preference would be to finish orders of clients who placed their orders earlier. Also assume that the fourth client came in only at 10:35. Between 10:00 and 10:30, for how many minutes is exactly one of the employees idle?
Answer & solution
- A
7
10
- C
15
- D
23
Suppose Anish will complete preparation of the burger of client 1 by 10:10. In the meantime, Bani will complete the order of ice-cream of client 1 by 10:02. 3 portions of fries would have been prepared by 10:05.
Bani would be free from 10:02 till 10:05 i.e., for 3 minutes.
At 10:05 when 2nd client's order comes, Bani and fryper would be free but Anish would be occupied.
Bani can put the 2 portions of fries in the fryer (completes at 10:10) and start the order of 1 ice-cream of client 2 which will be completed by by 10.07. So the entire order of client 2 will complete by 10:10.
At 10:07 when 3rd client's order comes, Bani would be free but fryer and Anish would be occupied.
Bani would start the order of burger and complete it by 10:17.
Anish and fryer both would be free at 10:10 and hence Anish can start the order of 1 portion of fries which would complete by 10:15.
Bani would be free from 10:17 till 10:30.
Anish would be free from 10:10 till 10:30.
Between 10:10 and 10:30 exactly one employee would be free only between 10:10 and 10:17 i.e., for 7 minutes.
Therefore exactly one employee if idle between 10:02 - 10:05 and 10:10 - 10:17 i.e., total 10 minutes.
Hence, option (b).