Mike and Tom debone chicken breasts for Ted's Chicken Co.Mike is new and can only debone 60 chicken breasts per hour by hand,while Tom's experience allows him to debone 120 chicken breasts per hour by hand.Ted buys one new machine that can debone 100 chicken breasts per hour.Both Mike and Tom work the same 40 hours per week,but one of them is assigned to operate the machine instead of deboning the chicken breasts by hand.To obtain maximum average hourly productivity,________ is assigned to use the machine and their combined average hourly productivity,as a team,is ________ chicken breasts.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

To maximize the average hourly productivity, the worker with the lower productivity should operate the machine. In this case, since Mike can debone only 60 chicken breasts by hand, it makes sense for him to operate the machine that can debone 100 chicken breasts per hour. Tom's productivity is higher, so he should continue to debone chicken breasts by hand.

Therefore, Mike operates the machine for 40 hours per week, and debones 60 chicken breasts by hand for 40 hours per week. Tom debones chicken breasts by hand for 80 hours per week.

The combined total of chicken breasts deboned per week is:

(60 chicken breasts per hour) x (40 hours per week) + (100 chicken breasts per hour) x (40 hours per week) + (120 chicken breasts per hour) x (80 hours per week)

= 2,400 + 4,000 + 9,600

= 16,000

The average hourly productivity is then:

16,000 chicken breasts ÷ 200 hours

= 80 chicken breasts per hour.

Therefore, the best choice is (B), Mike operating the machine and the team deboning 110 chicken breasts per hour on average.

Mike and Tom Debone Chicken Breasts for Ted's Chicken Co