The learning curve phenomenon is one of the reasons why an assembly line with n stations is capable of out-producing n single workstations, where each single station does the entire work content of...

The learning curve phenomenon is one of the reasons why an assembly line with n stations is capable of out-producing n single workstations, where each single station does the entire work content of the job. Consider the case of a product whose theoretical work content time for the first unit is 20 min. The effect of an 85% learning rate is to be compared for two cases, using the Crawford learning curve model:

• Ten single workstations, each doing the entire assembly task

• One perfectly balanced 10-station assembly line, where each station does 2.0 minutes of the total work content.

For the 1000th unit produced, determine the rate of production of (a) the 10 single workstations, and (b) the 10-station assembly line. Use the Crawford learning curve model.