Question

The overhead costs for a company are presently $X per month. The management team of the company in cooperation with the employees is ready to implement a comprehensive improvement program to reduce these costs. If you (a) consider an observation of actual overhead costs for one month analogous to an output unit, (b) estimate the overhead costs for the first month of program implementation to be 1.15X due to extra front-end effort, and (c) consider a 90% improvement curve applicable to the situation, what is your estimate of the percentage reduction in present overhead costs per month after 30 months of program implementation

Answer 1

31.42%

Explanation:

The computation of the estimate of the percentage reduction in present overhead costs per month is shown below:-

n = log s ÷ log2

= log 0.90 ÷ log 2

= -0.152

Now we will use the learning curve equation which is here below:

Z30 = 1.15X × 30^(-0.152)

= 0.685765148

So, the cost is reduced by

= 1 - 0.685765148

= 0.314234852

or

= 31.42%