CAT Questions | CAT LR DI

CAT DI LR section has become increasingly tough beginning from 2015. However, Understanding the basics of Bar graphs, Pie Charts, Multiple graphs, Line Graphs etc forms an integral part of solving tougher CAT level DI LR questions for the CAT Exam. This question is from CAT 2017 Slot 1 CAT DILR.

CAT DILR : 2017 slot 1 questions

Fast Food Joint

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 take 5 minutes irrespective of the number of portions. The fryer does not need an employee to constantly attend to it, and we can ignore 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 orders as early as possible. The individual items in any orders 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:

Question 4: Suppose the employees are allowed to process multiple orders 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?

1. 7
2. 10
3. 15
4. 23

Video Explanation

Explanatory Answer

Method of solving this Question on CAT DILR

General Solution

Client 1: 1 burger, 3 portions of fries, 1 order of ice cream



Anish is busy till 10:10. Bani is busy till 10:02. Next order comes in at 10:05. Bani is idle from 10:02 to 10:05. He is idle for 3 min.

Client 2: 2 fries and 1 ice-cream: Order comes at 10:05



Bani starts preparing 1 ice-cream for client 2 from 10:05, he also keeps the fries on the fryer at 10:05.

Client 3: 1 Burger and 1 ice-cream: Order comes at 10:07



Anish finishes 1 Burger for client 1 at 10:10. Anish is idle from 10:10 to 10:17 when Bani is busy with Burger. After that, both will be idle. Anish is idle for 7 min from 10:10 to 10:17 and Bani is idle for 3 min from 10:02 to 10:05.

So, exactly one employee will be idle for 7 + 3 = 10 min.

The question is "How many minutes is exactly one of the employees idle?"

Hence, the answer is "10".

Choice B is the correct answer.