Exam 7: B: Design of Work Systems

Learning percentages can be determined from: I.the estimates based on past experience. II.fitting a power function to past data. III.fitting a linear function to the log of past data.

The 3^rd unit of a ten-unit job required 7.3 hours to complete.The 4^th unit has been worked on for two hours,but it is not yet finished.Estimate the remaining amount of time that will be needed to finish this ten-unit job if the work has an 80% learning curve.

A job has a 70% learning curve.If the first unit took 10 hours to complete,the third unit should take roughly how many hours?

A company is preparing a bid on a government contract for 40 units of a certain product.The operations manager estimates the assembly time required for the first two units to be 10.4 hours and 8.8 hours,respectively.What is the average time per unit for the 40 units?

The learning percentage is the base of the power function that is fitted to the data.

A job with a 70 percent learning curve required 20 hours for the initial unit.The fourth unit should require approximately how many hours?

The decrease in time between the second and fourth units will be equal to the decrease in time between the first and second units.

If the task is short and somewhat routine; a modest amount of improvement occurs during the first few repetitions.

When the task is fairly complex and has a longer duration,improvement will occur over a larger number of repetitions.

It takes a worker with a 90 percent learning curve 72.9 minutes to complete the fourth unit of a seven-unit job.Estimate the amount of time the worker spent on the first two units.

A company is preparing a bid on a government contract for 40 units of a certain product.The operations manager estimates the assembly time required for the first two units to be 10.4 hours and 8.8 hours,respectively.What is the expected time required to produce the 40^th unit?

A manager wants to analyze the learning curve associated with producing one of his company's products.Accordingly,he has gathered the following data: Approximately how long did it take to produce the first four units?

A company is preparing a bid on a government contract for 40 units of a certain product.The operations manager estimates the assembly time required for the first two units to be 10.4 hours and 8.8 hours,respectively.Which unit,if any,will require approximately one-half the time of the first unit?

Learning curves can be used to understand how direct labour costs per unit can be expected to decrease as more units are produced.

A job has an 80 percent learning curve.The second unit required 12 hours to complete.Approximately how many hours will be devoted to the first five units (including those already completed)?

Sally suspects strongly that there is a learning curve associated with solving problems assigned for operations management.She notes that it took her approximately 33 minutes to solve the first problem and 17 minutes to solve the fifth problem. (i)Estimate Sally's learning percentage. (ii)Using your answer from part a,estimate how long it will take Sally to finish the three problems which remain.

Projections based on learning curves should be treated as approximations.

A manager is trying to estimate the appropriate learning curve for a certain job.The manager notes that the first four units had a total time of 30 minutes.Which learning curve would yield approximately this result if the first unit took 10 minutes?

Which of the following is not a major caution or criticism of learning curves?

Learning curves are sometimes used for manpower planning and scheduling.