Each time Mayberry Nursery hires a new employee, it must wait for some period of time before the employee can meet production standards. Management is unsure of the learning curve in its operations but it knows the first job by a new employee averages 30 hours and the second job averages 24 hours. Assume all jobs to be equal in size.
Required:
a. What is the learning-curve percentage, assuming the cumulative average-time method?
b. What is the time for a new employee to build 16 units with this learning curve using the cumulative average-time method? You may use an index of -0.1520.