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Operations and Productivity

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These are some of the problems assigned from Chapter 1: Operations and Productivity. Here is the link to access chapter 1 in order to answer below problems.

http://www.coursesmart.com/9780135106822/part01#X2ludGVybmFsX1BGUmVhZGVyP3htbGlkPTk3ODAxMzUxMDY4MjIvMjE=

1.1 John Lucy makes wooden boxes in which to ship motorcycles. John and his three employees invest a total of 40 hours per day making the 120 boxes.
A) What is their productivity?
B) John and his employees and discussed redesigning the process to improve efficiency. If they can increase the rate to 125 per day, what will be their new productivity?
C) What will be their unit increase in productivity per hour?
D) What will be their percentage change in productivity?

1.3 This year, Benson, Inc., will produce 57,600 hot water heaters at its plant in Yulee, Florida, in order to meet expected global demand. To accomplish that, each laborer at the Yulee plant will work 160 hours per month. If the labor productivity at the plant is 0.15 hot water heaters per labor-hour, how many laborers are employed at the plant?

1.8 Kleen Karpet cleaned 65 rugs in October, consuming the following resources:
Labor 520 hours at $13 per hour
Solvent 100 gallons at $5 per gallon
Machine Rental 20 days at $50 per day
a) What is the labor productivity per dollar?
b) What is the multifactor productivity?

1.13 Charles Lackey operates a bakery in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Because of its excellent product and excellent location, demand has increased by 25% in the last year. On far too many occasions, customers have not been able to purchase the bread of their choice. Because of the size of the store, no new ovens can be added. At a staff meeting, one employee suggested ways to load the ovens differently so that more loaves of bread can be baked at one time. This new process will require that the ovens be loaded by hand, requiring additional manpower. This is the only thing to be changed. If the bakery makes 1500 loaves per month with a labor productivity of 2,344 loaves per labor-hour, how many workers will Lackey need to add? ( Hint: each worker works 160 hours per month)

1.16 In December, General Motors produced 6600 customized vans at its plant in Detroit. The labor productivity at this plant is known to have been 0.10 vans per labor-hour during that month. 300 laborers were employed at the plant that month.
a) How many hours did the average laborer work that month?
b) If productivity can be increased to 0.11 vans per hour, how many hours would the average laborer work that month?

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Solution Summary

This solution includes a detalled step-by-step explanation to a set of Operations and Productivity questions. In this solution you will learn how to calculate labor productivity, multi-factor productivity, as well as the percentage change in productivity.

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Hello Student,

Before I proceed to help you with answering these five questions, let me remind you of what is productivity. Productivity in any organization may be viewed as how well that organization uses its resources and/or inputs to manufacture or produce goods and services and/or outputs. Note the following excerpt:

"Productivity is a ratio used to measure how well an organization (or individual, industry, country) converts input resources (labor, materials, machines etc.) into goods and services. This is usually expressed in ratios of inputs to outputs." Source: http://www.accel-team.com/productivity/productivity_01_what.html

Productivity is therefore calculated by using the following:

Productivity = Output / Input

Where output represents goods and/or services produced and input represents either land, labor or capital used in production.

As it relates to question 1.1 - John Lucy, to find:

a) Old Productivity = Number of Wooden Boxes produced (Output) / Number of Hours (Input)

= 120 Boxes / 40 hours

= 3 Boxes / Labour Hour

b) New Productivity = Number of Wooden Boxes produced / Number of Hours

= 125 Boxes / 40 hours

= (Calculate answer)

c) To find the unit increase in productivity per labour hour, you simply subtract the old productivity from the new produvity found above.

d) Percentage change in productivity is found ...

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