Local market research firm has just won the contract for numerous thousand small projects involving data gathering and statistical investigation. In the past, the firm has assigned each project to single member of its highly-trained professional staff. This person would both collect and examine the data. By using this approach, an experienced person can complete an average of ten such projects in an 8-hour day. The firm’s management is thinking of assigning two people to each project in order to permit them to specialize and become more efficient. The process would need the data gatherer to fill a matrix on the computer, check it, and transmit it to statistical investigation program for the analyst to complete. Data can be collected on one project while the investigation is being completed on another, but the analysis should be complete before the statistical analysis program can accept the new data. After some practice, the new process can be finished with a standard time of 20 minutes for the data gathering and 30 minutes for analysis.

a. What is the production (output per hour) for the each alternative? What is productivity (output per labour hour)?

b. How long would it take to finish 1,000 projects with each alternative? What is the labour content (total number of labour hours) for 1,000 projects for an each alternative?