Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Learning Curves
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
7S-2
Learning Curves
Learning curve
The time required to perform a task decreases with
increasing repetitions
The degree of improvement is a function of the task
being done
Short, routine tasks will show modest improvement
relatively quickly
Longer, more complex tasks will show improvement
over a longer interval
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Learning
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Learning Illustrated
Each time cumulative output doubles, the time per unit for that
amount should be approximately equal to the previous time
multiplied by the learning percentage.
If the first unit of a process took 100 hours and the learning rate is
90%:
Unit
= 100
.90(100) = 90
.90(90) = 81
.90(81) = 72.9
16
.90(72.9) = 65.61
32
.90(65.61) = 59.049
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T25 100 25
ln .90
ln 2
.15200
100 25
61.3068 hours
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Operations Strategy
Learning curves have strategic implications for:
Market entry when trying to rapidly gain market share
As volume increases, operations is able to move quickly
down the learning curve
Reduced cost improved competitive advantage
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