Unscheduled absences by clerical and production workers are an important cost in many companies. Reducing the rate of absenteeism is, therefore, an important goal for a company's human relations department. A rate of absenteeism above 5% is a serious concern. Many companies set 3% absent as a desirable target. You have been asked to improve absenteeism in a production facility where 12% of the workers are now absent on a typical day. After studying the situation at the company, you recommend retraining of all the supervisors in human relations skills. In addition, you ask supervisors to talk with any absent worker when he or she returns to work. Working with the engineering department, you study the workstations with high absenteeism rates and make changes such as better lighting. You refurbish the restrooms and schedule more frequent cleaning. You develop a control chart based on the current 987 production workers, and a total absence of 7580 person-days among all workers in the previous three months of 64 workdays.

Required:

A. Evaluate if your recommendations made any difference by plotting the following recorded proportions of workers absent during the next four weeks.

(20 marks)

Day	M	T	W	TH	F	M	T	W	TH	F
Workers absent	129	121	117	109	122	119	103	103	89	105
Proportion	0.131	0.123	0.119	0.110	0.124	0.121	0.104	0.104	0.090	0.106
Workers absent	99	92	83	92	92	115	101	106	83	98
Proportion	0.100	0.093	0.084	0.093	0.093	0.117	0.102	0.107	0.084	0.099

B. What would you recommend management does based on your observations in Part A?