A document is to be typed, and signed. Typing takes 2 hours, proofreading 1 hour, and singing 30 minutes. If only one task can be done at a time, what is the minimum time required to complete all three tasks for three documents, if tasks can be parallelized across different staff?
A document is to be typed, and signed. Typing takes 2 hours, proofreading 1 hour, and singing 30 minutes. If only one task can be done at a time, what is the minimum time required to complete all three tasks for three documents, if tasks can be parallelized across different staff?
Explanation
With parallelization across different staff, the tasks can be efficiently pipelined.
Given the schedule:
1. Typist takes 2 hours per document.
2. Proofreader takes 1 hour per document.
3. Signer takes 0.5 hours per document.
The pipeline schedule shows:
After Doc 1 is typed (2 hours), it moves to proofreading, and Doc 2 starts typing.
By the time Doc 3 is done typing (6 hours total for typing 3 documents), Doc 1 would have been signed (3.5 hours total for Doc 1 to be signed after starting typing).
The critical path here is determined by the longest sequence in the pipeline, which is typing (6 hours for 3 documents).
Given the pipelined schedule provided:
The last document (Doc 3) finishes signing at 4.5 hours.