Concepts of Learning Curve Social and Behavioral Sciences

Question: Discuss about the Concepts of Learning Curve for Social and Behavioral Sciences. Answer: Introduction Learning curve: The line which will display the relationship among per unit of the total labor directly and the quantity that is cumulative of the produced services or products. Organizational learning: Process for getting experience with processes and products, attaining efficiency that is greater through investments of other capital and automation. The productivity of it gets enhanced which get gained may be from good work supervision, design of product, tools and methods similarly from learning of the individual worker. These enhancements states that standards that already existed should evaluated continually and set the new ones. (Ritter, 2002) The Effect of Learning This will get represented by line known as the learning curve, which work is to display the relationship among per unit total direct labor and the quantity that is cumulative for the produced service or product. This curve communicates to the task or job which is repetitive and states relationship among productivity and experience: Once firm or operator increases the units, the time needed for producing it got decreased. There is a development of operations with standard time and negligible of learning. Experience curve and function for manufacturing progress will be used for describing the above relationship, whereas this curve usually refers to cost of total value-added for each unit. Competitive Strategy and Learning Curves This enables project managers for producing cumulative quantity for manufacturing the cost per unit. Organizations which opt for emphasizing on low price will rely on the high volumes for maintaining the margins of profit. Thus the learning curve strives down by raising the volume. This tactics start entry into market with competitors. This states that cumulative production of anything will reduce the cost of it. First firms in market should have big benefit due to sell of new comers at very low price and thus suffer the starting initial losses. (Grant, 2004) Figure 1: Based on cumulative and process time Thus with the increased production, any changes to product or market will affect the expected advantages. For instance, formula of learning curve was used management of Douglas Aircraft for reducing the cost for new aircraft and commit for having fixed prices and dates. Learning curve gets disturbed with continuous changes for the planes, and thus not realized the reduction of cost. These issues of financial outcomes end with merger of Douglas Aircraft with McDonnell Company. Building Learning Curves: Here, we are focusing on per unit of labor hour where we can simply use the costs. Following assumptions are made while building the learning curve. For producing the 1st unit direct labor is needed that will be less always from the nth unit of the needed direct labor. Thus, there is a reduction of production time per unit with fixed percentage for production done every time which get doubled. Logarithmic model is used for drawing the learning curve. For nth unit kn labor needed directly is: (Sammut, 2009) kn = k1nb k Table 1: Conversion Factors Where The above figure contains factor of conversion, when multiplied for first unit directly with labor hours, for selected cumulative the average time per unit for the production quantities. r = learning rate (in decimals) b = log r log 2 n = units productive in cumulative numbers k1 = for first unit the direct labor hours Learning Curves Use This will get utilized in number of ways. Below we are providing details view on estimation of labor requirement, Preparation of bid and financial planning. Preparation of Bid Preparing bid for the huge jobs the significant part is estimating the labor costs. With the help of learning curve and knowing learning rate, it can produce the number of units, similarly with wage rates, an estimator can find with the labor cost. After calculating the materials costs and expected labor, an estimator adds the profit which gets obtained from total bid quantity. Financial Planning This uses learning curves for supporting the financial planner that determines the cash amount required for finance operations. This curve will give the basis for comparing costs and prices. For financial drain, this is used as project periods, where expenditures will exceed the receipts. Used for determining the contract price with recognizing per unit of labor costs for contracted units number. It enables financial planner for arranging the finance of operations for various phases. (Meek, 2002) Estimation of Labor Needs Analyst uses learning curve for projecting the needs of direct labor for the provided production schedule. For estimating the training needs and developing the staffing plans and production this data is utilized. Tasks of Learning Curve Breaks in manufacturing Better operation synchronizations and sequencing Rework and Scrap reduction Lot sizes increased Improved Scheduling, planning, work methods and productivity in design Improvement in Tooling Decrement in workstations that are crowded Needs of labor Learning of worker (Ben, 2012) Cumulative average curve It states that the necessity of direct labor man-hours for completing the production per unit will get decreased by the constant percentage every time the quantity of production gets doubled. Learning curve would get 80 percent with the improvement rate among doubled quantities would be 20 percent. It supports in reduction the effect of information variation and produces the statistical models that are good. Learning curve gets extended to cost whereas it mainly emphasized on time. Figure 2: Cumulative and Quantity This Wright method is used best when the production will get prepared will by the contractor and begins as per lead times, suppliers and tooling. This curve will be based on production quantity average cost rather than particular unit of cost. This creates less responsive the Cumulative average cost to trends of cost than the curve cost unit. Manufacturing breaks The production or manufacturing break is the lapse of time among order completion or run of manufacturing for certain equipment units for manufacturing restart or order follow-up for the similar units. This lapse of time disrupts the manufacturing continuous flow and constitutes the impact of definite cost. This lapse time will discuss for important time periods as opposed to hours or minutes used for the like, power failures, machine delays and personnel allowance. Since there is relationship with both time/cost in learning curve, this break will affect both cost and time. Thus, break length becomes important factor of cost. It is very significant for determining at time of manufacturing the break cost. Below figure represents graphically the cause of production break to learning curve which shift it upwards as per learning amount which get lost. (Madhavan, 2007) Figure 3: For log scale graph shows production break Conclusion For planning and operations this learning curves is termed as useful tools but several things are there which managers keep in mind. Firstly, for using learning curve it is necessary to estimate the learning rate, and thus it is difficult to get it. Using averages of industry would be risky as competitive niches and work type differ from organization to organization. Factors on which learning curve depends are capital additions rate and complexity of process. Learning rate will be less pronounced if the process is very simple. More opportunity will be offered for complex process from simple process for enhancing the flow of materials and methods of work. Learning rate alters with automation of direct labor hours replacement that provide less opportunity which made reduction in needed per unit hour. Another significant estimate, if production of first unit is still pending, is that for producing the needed time. This estimation has to get created using past experiences by management w ith products that are similar. In the starting stages of new production of products or services, the greatest benefit was provided by learning curves. Effect of learning is not noticeable, as produced the cumulative units number would becomes huge. These curves are dynamic as they got affected by numerous factors. References Ritter, F. E., Schooler, L. J. (2002). The learning curve, In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Grant, R. M. (2004), Contemporary strategy analysis, Blackwell publishing, ISBN 1-4051-1999-3 Sammut, C.; Webb, G. I. (2009), Encyclopedia of Machine Learning, p. 578 Meek, C.; Thiesson, B.; Heckerman, D. (2002), "The Learning-Curve Sampling Method Applied to Model-Based Clustering", Journal of Machine Learning Research, 2 (3): 397 Ben Z. (2012). Downtown Abbey, https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3767 Madhavan, P.G. (2007). "A New Recurrent Neural Network Learning Algorithm for Time Series Prediction", Journal of Intelligent Systems, p. 113