Question

Home Building Inc. (HBI) seeks to schedule manual labor for 18 new homes being constructed. Histor- ical data leads HBI to apply a 92% learning curve rate to the manual labor portions of the project. If the first home requires 3,500 manual labor hours to build, estimate the time required to build (a) the fifth 2-57 house, (b) the tenth house, (c) all 18 houses. What would the manual labor estimate be for all 18 of the HBI houses in the problem above if the learning curve rate is (d) 70%, (e) 75%, (f) 80%?

Answer 1

Home Building Inc (HBI) seeks to schedule manual labor of 18 new homes being constructed. Historical data leads HBI to apply a 92% learning curve rate to the manual labor portions of the project. Let - y_n - cumulative average time to produce n units. A = time to produce first unit n - no. of units b = log (learning curve)/log_2 The first home requires 3500 manual labor hours Learning rate = 92% therefore b = log (0.92)/log (2) = -0.12 therefore y = 3500 x^0.12 The cumulative total time for times units = x times y = 3500 * times (1 - 0.12) = 3500 times 0.88 For 5th house we have to find difference of x = 4 and x = 5 Thus, The time required to build the 5th house \r\n therefore Time required to build 5th house, = 3500 times (5)^0.88 - 3500 times (4)^0.88 = 14426.52 - 11854.43 = 2572.0876 = 2572.09 manual hours so the time required to build 5th house is 2572.09 hours.