Case Study $1-$ Your Garden Gloves

"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 owner's 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:

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

productivity into account.

Questions

Which crew size had the highest productivity per worker? Which crew size had the lowest

productivity per worker? What are some possible explanations for these results?

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.

What is a possible qualitative issue that may very well influence productivity levels that the

productivity ratios fail to take into account?