A 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, decided to investigate. He kept records of job times and crew sizes, and then used those records to compute labor productivity. The results were:Crew sizeAverage Productivity per Crew
24,234 square feet per day
35,352 square feet per day
47,860 square feet per day
The company operates on a small profit margin, so it is especially important to take worker productivity into account.QuestionsWhich crew size had the highest productivity? Which crew size had the lowest productivity? What are some possible explanations for these results?What is a possible qualitative issue that may very well influence productivity levels that the productivity ratios fail to take into account?