There are 20 forging presses in the forge shop of a small company. The shop produces batches of forgings requiring a setup time of 3.0 hours for each production batch. Average standard time for each part in a batch is 45 seconds, and there are an average of 600 parts in a batch. The plant workforce consists of two workers per press, two foremen, plus three clerical support staff. (a) Determine how many forged parts can be produced in 1 month, if there are 8 hours worked per day and an average of 21 days per month at one shift per day. (b) What is the labor productivity ratio of the forge shop, expressed as parts per worker-hour?

To understand this answer we need to analyze the problem. First of all, we can only produce 2 batches of production by the press because we require 3 hours to set it up. So if we rest those 6 hours from the 8 of the shift we get 6, leaving 2 for an incomplete bath. So multiplying 2 batches per day of production by press we obtain 40 batches per day. So, considering we work in this factory for 21 days per month well that makes 40 x 21 making 840 then we multiply the batches for the pieces 840 x 600 obtaining 504000 pieces produced per month. To obtain the productivity ratio we need to divide the standard labor hours meaning 6 by the amount of time worked meaning 8. Obtaining 75% efficiency.