Question

2-66 New technicians in an oncology department process patients at rates shown below. Steady state occurs at the eighth unit. Patient number:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Process time (min): 75 61 52 50 45 43 40 39 (a) Calculate the learning curve rate for units 1-8. (b) What is the total time needed to process 12 patients?

For engineering economic analysis class

Answer 1

a. Y=ax^b , where a is the starting time, x is the number of patients and b is log₂(learning rate), is used to calculate the learning curve rate. By plotting the graph of the form and using power form in excel we get the values as,

Y=75.322X^-0.317

80 70 y75.322x-0317 60 250 h 40 L 30 20 Process time (m in) Power (Process time (min)) 10 0 1 234 5 6 78 Patient Number

So, we have value of b = -0.317, which forms 80% as the learning rate

b=log(0.8,2) = -0.322

b) Total time needed to process 12 patients is 548.33 minutes

Patient Number	Process time (min)	Process time (min) as per formula,75.322X-0.317	Cumulative time (min)
1	75	75.32
2	61	60.46	135.79
3	52	53.17	188.96
4	50	48.54	237.49
5	45	45.22	282.72
6	43	42.68	325.40
7	40	40.65	366.04
8	39	38.96	405.01
9		37.53	442.54
10		36.30	478.84
11		35.22	514.06
12		34.26	548.33