The assembly line was created to help improve production
rates and lower cost, so that items can be mass-produced and more easily
accessible. I used this concept to compare the rate of production between a
team of experienced workers, and a group of inexperienced workers to show that
experience dramatically increases production.
Before actually starting the assembly line, I took some time
to calculate how much time was invested in each step of the assembly process. I
first started by having each of my 4 friends that I used in the previous
experiment glue together five sets of Popsicle sticks each, and timed how long
it took them, individually. I clocked each cross to be glued together in an average
of seven seconds for all four people. I also had each of them weave together 2
eyes of god from the popsicle sticks that they had glued together just seconds
ago. I clocked the average time for the weaving of the eye of god to take an
average of 9 and half minutes for all four individuals.
I then took a new group of four new friends, and once again
timed them in each step of production. Due to their lack of experience in
creating the product, their rate of production was slightly lower than that of my
experienced friends who worked in the previous experiment. The average time to
glue together the popsicle sticks was 7 seconds, but the average time to weave
the yarn together was a whole minute and half slower per person, at right
around 11 minutes. It was clear that the increase in time came from the
inexperience they had with the production.
Now, applying these times to the assembly line, I was able
to inherently show that experience alone allowed for a much higher rate of
production, compared to the inexperienced workers. I decided to, once again,
have one person who would glue together the popsicle sticks for each team, and
the other three would be responsible for weaving the yarn onto the crosses. I
set the clock for 12 minutes, and they began to work.
From the start, it is clear that the experienced team is
working much more efficiently. They have sticks glued together in 7 seconds and
out to each person within 30 seconds. Now, knowing that it was very unlikely
that a person could finish more than 2 eyes of gods in the 12 minutes, the
person gluing together the sticks for the experienced team, glued two crosses
for each person, including himself, and then switched over to weaving.
The team of inexperienced workers had a similar start,
shelling out sticks about every 8 seconds, but failed to account for the large
time-investment that came when weaving together the eye of god. This resulted
in the over-production of crosses, leading to an under-production in eyes of
god, because the first person took too much time gluing together sticks that
could have been spent weaving. They eventually caught on and had it quickly resolved.
By the end of the twelve minutes, 3 of the 4 members of experienced workers
were finishing up on their second eye of god each, while the team of
inexperienced workers only had one person who had completed two whole projects.
I judged each incomplete eye of god on level of completion based on the amount
of progress in comparison to a fully completed product. In the group of experience
workers, they were able to complete 7.75 products, compared to only 5.50
completed products. With production rate about 30% higher, the experienced team’s
efficiency came from their experience with creating the product, thus knowing
methods of cutting down production time, and creating more product.
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