a$.$ Case Study I

Your Garden Gloves is a small gardening business located in Michigan. The company plants

and maintains flower gardens for both commercial and residential clients. The company was

founded about five years ago, and has since grown substantially, averaging about $10$ new clients

and one new employee a year. The company currently employs eight seasonal employees who

are responsible for a certain number of clients. Each morning crews are assigned to jobs by the

owner. Crew sizes range from two to four workers. Crew size and composition are a function of

the square footage of the garden and requirements of the job. The owner feels that large jobs

should be assigned to crews of four workers in order to complete the job in a reasonable amount

of time. From time to time, the owner noticed that some jobs, especially the largest ones, took

longer than she had estimated, based on the square footage of the garden space involved. The

owners son, Joe, decided to investigate. He kept records of job times and crew sizes, and then

used those records to compute labor productivity. The results were:

Crew Size Average Productivity per

Crew

$24,234$ square feet per day

$35,352$ square feet per day

$47,860$ square feet per day

The company operates on a small profit margin, so it is especially important to take worker

productivity into account.

Questions

i$.$ Which crew size had the highest productivity per worker?

ii$.$ Which crew size had the lowest productivity per worker? What are some possible

explanations for these results?

iii. After a recent storm, a customer called in a panic, saying that she had planned a

garden party for the upcoming weekend and her garden was in shambles. The

owner decided to send a crew of four workers, even though a two$-$worker crew

would have a higher productivity. Explain the rationale for this decision.

iv$.$ What is a possible qualitative issue that may very well influence productivity levels

that the productivity ratios fail to take into account?