Productivity and Project Management Questions

Productivity Question #1 – Local Car Wash

This assignment is an individual assignment.  Full sentences and conclusion should be present to support your answers.  All calculations and formulas should be shown.  Ensure you provide conclusion/summary statement for each question. If you have any questions, please let me know.  This assignment is due February 27^th, 2022 @ 11:59PM.

A local carwash has three employees working 40 hours a week, at a pay rate of $26.76 per hour per employee. Each employee cleans an average of 140 cars a week.  The car wash is paid average of $35.00 each washed car. Material costs are $300 per week, and overhead costs are $2,500 per week.

1) Calculate the multifactor productivity for this operation in revenue generated per dollar of input. (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round the final answer to 2 decimal places.)  (3 marks)

2) If the operator was able to reduce overhead costs by half by adding an additional employee. Assume no change in the number of cars or revenue from point 1. What would be the new productivity?  Is this a good option? (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round the final answer to 2 decimal places.) (3 marks) 

3) If the operator was able to reduce labour to 2 employees by adding extra equipment, which would drive the overhead to $3500 per week.    Assume no change to the number of cars and revenue from point 1.  What would be the new productivity?  Is this a good option? (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round the final answer to 2 decimal places.)  (3 marks)

4) Of the three scenarios above, which is the best solution for the Car Wash Owner?  (1 mark)

A human carpet weaver takes 200 hours to weave a 5.6 m by 6 m area carpet, whereas a carpet weaving machine can weave the same carpet in two hours. 

1) Calculate the productivity for the human and the machine.  State answer relative to m2 per hour (rounded to three decimal places) and conclude which is a better choice.  (3 marks)

2) If we include costs of $8.75 per hour for the human and $275 per hour for the machine.  Recalculate the productivity in term of output per $ input (rounded to four decimal places).  Compare the human/machine and state your conclusion. (3 marks)

Claire received a new word-processing software program for her birthday. She also received a cheque with which she intends to purchase a new computer. Claire's university instructor assigned a paper due next week. Claire decided that she will prepare the paper on the new computer. She made a list of the activities and their estimated durations. Claire's friend has offered to shop for, select, and purchase a computer, and install the software.

1) Arrange the tasks into two logical sequences/paths.  Draw an AON diagram.  (4 marks) Hint: not all of these items are dependent of each other, so there can be parallel activities.

2 Determine the critical path based on determining the length of each path. (4 marks)

For each of the problems listed below, determine the following values for each activity: the earliest start time, earliest finish time, latest finish time, latest start time, and activity slack time.