Eco 550 Week 4 Paper

We explored three different options, given the need to create a division of work that would maximize the number of tables manufactured per day by either utilizing four or five employees and allowing the employees to either be part of the manufacturing process or manufacture tables on their own. We first decided to combine the finishing step with the packaging step since packaging required a very minimal amount of time and because the employee assigned to this function was being severely underutilized , therefore one employee could handle both job duties. We also decided that Cathy should be excluded from the manufacturing process and George should manufacture tables on his own, since he is the one that can assemble a table using the least amount of time. Using the Assignment method and the different times that it would take each individual to perform each job duty we concluded that it will take 260 minutes to manufacture one table given that assembly was assigned to Tom (60), finishing and packaging was assigned to Leon(90), and preparation was assigned to Randy(110). By utilizing this approach Tom, Leon, and Randy could manufacture 4.36 tables in 480 minutes( total time available divided by longest job time), given that they work an eight hour shift, meanwhile George could manufacture
For the second approach we decided to assign each job duty to the person that would required the least amount of time for each different job duty, given that preparation was assigned to Tom, since there was no one else that could do the duty for 100 minutes or less and this was the longest job time from the entire process. We also decided to let George manufacture tables on his own and exclude Cathy from the manufacturing process. This approached equated to a total of 270 hours, given than assembly was assigned to Randy( 80), finishing and packaging to Leon(90), and preparation to Tom(100). By utilizing