Exam 6: Learning Curves

You are a consultant specializing in estimating the costs after the employees learn how to do a job more efficiently by repetition. Your client can produce a product the first time at a cost of $2,500. If their 65 percent learning curve allows them to reduce their costs on each product, what is the total cost of producing 400 units of the new product?

The point at which the scale economy curve and the learning curve intersect is called the capacity optimum.

You have just timed a person doing a job a few times. The first time it took the person 25 minutes, the second time it took 20 minutes, and the third time it took 17.55 minutes. Which learning curve unit improvement factor should you use?

You have just timed a person doing a haircut for the first time. It took 50 minutes. What unit improvement factor learning curve would you use if the person took 35 minutes on the second haircut?

Which of the following is a reason that there are disparities between a firm's learning curve rate and that of its industry?

With a 70 percent unit improvement factor learning curve and an initial time of 100 minutes to do a job, at what number of repetitions does the job take less than 50 minutes?

You have determined that a 75 percent learning curve is appropriate for a task. If the initial timing of the person performing that job was 50 minutes, and if you need the job performed 500 times, how many minutes of work will be required?

When plotted on a graph, the learning curve can't be expressed as logarithm.

If a person performing a task has been achieving a 75 percent learning curve and you know that the task will end after the 80^th unit, the last unit produced will take 17.12 percent as much time as the first unit.

If a person performing a task has been achieving a 95 percent learning curve and you know that the task will end after the 100^th unit, the last unit produced will take 71.12 percent as much time as the first unit.

The unit improvement factor is not as useful as arithmetic tabulation of learning curve statistics in adjusting time estimates for learning.

The general guidelines provided in the textbook on improving individual learning based on learning curves include which of the following?

Organizational learning results mainly from practice.

An assumption of learning curve theory is which of the following?

An assumption of learning curves is that the time required to complete a unit will decrease at an increasing rate as the cumulative number of units completed increases.

Learning curves can be applied to individuals and to organizations.

A learning curve is a line displaying the way unit production time decreases as time passes.

A learning curve shows the increase in time required for each successive unit completed.

An assumption of learning curves is that the time required to complete a unit will increase at an increasing rate as the cumulative number of units completed increases.

On a learning curve plot, the time per unit is usually displayed on the vertical axis.