A flow calculation needs the same population and time boundary

A fictional service team records an average of forty requests in progress and completes ten requests per working day over a stable observation interval. Its agreed boundary runs from accepted request to completed delivery. Another team reports only active handling minutes and proposes comparing that number directly with the first team’s implied elapsed lead time. The supplied figures are a simplified average model, not a promise about each request or an official capacity assessment. This written exercise changes no staffing or queue policy. The learner should use consistent population, units and flow boundaries, identify the difference between average elapsed time and active work, and explain why the observed averages do not by themselves prove a particular cause of delay.