General Electric manufactures and refurbishes GE diesel locomotives at a facility in Erie Pennsylvania. The facility remanufactures machines that have reached a point in their service life such that they are beyond the point of applying ordinary maintenance procedures. A model that entered service 10 years ago has begun to show up at the facility. A crew of 15 mechanics recently required 3.4 weeks to refurbish the first machine that came to facility. Due to a backlog of other repair and refurbishing work, crews will not refurbish any other units until 2016.
Based on experience with other models, the company anticipates a 93% learning curve (with each doubling of the number of units repaired) with regard to man-hours required to refurbish a locomotive. The company expects to refurbish 16 locomotives in the coming year (2016); that number is expected to grow by 20 percent per year for the next four years.
Compensation to mechanics, including wages, benefits, insurances, etc. is currently $43 per hour, a figure that is expected to grow by 4% per year. You may assume that mechanics work 40 hours per week and 48 weeks per year (net of vacations and sick days).
As a company analyst, you have been asked to do the following:
Estimate refurbishing labor hours required for this particular model in each year, 2016-2019
Estimate refurbishing labor costs in each year, 2016-2019
An estimate of refurbishing manpower headcount required in each year, 2016-2019
Create a spreadsheet tool to derive the estimates above. Use excel to emulate the exhibit on the following page. Print the corresponding exhibit in excel, and staple it on top of the remainder your printed spreadsheet. Structure your spreadsheet as per directives given earlier in the semester.
Analyst:___________________________________________________________________
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2016
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2017
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2018
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2019
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Locomotives refurbished
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Labor hours required
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Labor costs
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Required Headcount
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Hours required for locomotive number 18:_______________________
Hours required for locomotive 48:________________________
Average hours required, first 50 locomotives: _____________________