Operations Management and Factors Affecting Productivity
Maduro Cleaning is a small organization that provides cleaning services to both residential and commercial clients. As a small organization, the owner assigns crews of two, three, or four employees to jobs each morning but the owner does not have a good method of determining a reasonable amount of time that each cleaning should take. The owner decided to keep data on job times and crew sizes in the hopes of developing a productivity measure.
Address the following requirements:
• Calculate which of the crew sizes has the best productivity per worker and explain your method.
Evaluate your outcome and the possible reasons that would explain those results.
• Project what the productivity might be for a crew size of five and explain your reasoning.
Crew Size Avg: Productivity per Crew
2:3765 square meters per day
3:4915 square meters per day
4:6309 square meters per day
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To determine which crew size has the best productivity per worker, we need to divide the productivity per crew by the number of workers in each crew.
For crew size 2:
Productivity per worker = 3765 square meters per day / 2 workers = 1882.5 square meters per worker per day
For crew size 3:
Productivity per worker = 4915 square meters per day / 3 workers ≈ 1638.33 square meters per worker per day
For crew size 4:
Productivity per worker = 6309 square meters per day / 4 workers = 1577.25 square meters per worker per day
Based on these calculations, crew size 2 has the best productivity per worker with an average of 1882.5 square meters per worker per day.
The outcome suggests that smaller crew sizes tend to have higher productivity per worker. This may be because with a smaller crew, there is less coordination and communication required, resulting in more efficient work. Additionally, smaller crews may be able to focus better on the task at hand without getting in each other's way.
To project the productivity for a crew size of five, we can use the same method as before:
For crew size 5:
Productivity per worker = (Average productivity per day of crew size 4) / 5 workers ≈ 1261.8 square meters per worker per day
Based on this calculation, we can expect the productivity per worker to be approximately 1261.8 square meters per day for a crew size of five.
However, it is important to note that there may be diminishing returns with larger crew sizes. As the crew size increases, there may be more coordination and communication challenges, resulting in lower productivity per worker. Additionally, there may be physical limitations on the number of individuals that can effectively work in a given area at the same time. Therefore, it is crucial for the owner to monitor and evaluate the productivity of different crew sizes to determine the optimal crew size for their cleaning services.