Faris Co. is an organisation that specialises in producing handmade door gifts for events and functions. Their target market is community-based social events and gatherings, including those organised by the commercial organisations. 

The management of Faris Co. has recently secured a 5-year contract from an established listed company, which has decided to roll out a series of social responsibility activities under the flagship of “We Do Care” programme. The programme aims to benefit the less privileged residents in the central region of the country. 

The 5-year contract requires Faris Co. to 

1.    Produce 3,000 units per day of door gifts Model MF-2. Model MF-2 is a current product line, i.e. following the standard specifications without any customisations. However, the products have to bear the client company’s company logo, and 

2.    Recruit the less privileged residents in the region as part of their production crew, and ensure that they make up at least 20% of the total production requirement under this contract, and this level of participation should remain throughout the contract period. 

Since the productions in Faris Co. is largely labour intensive, the management is currently assessing the production manpower required to deliver orders within this contract, and to plan out its recruitment exercise in fulfilling the requirements in the contract. 

In a normal situation, each worker is expected to be actively working for 6 hours in a day. Past records show that learning effect will be expected as the same worker continues to work on the production. 

The production specification is such that it will run in batches of 50 units. The first batch is expected to use 30 labour hours, and there will be a 60 per cent learning curve that will continue until 8 batches have been completed. Subsequently, every batch will require the same amount of labour hours as the 8th batch.

Required:

(a)        Determine the time taken to produce the 8th batch of Model MF-2. 

(b)       Determine the number of workers that Faris Co. needs to recruit from the target community in order to fulfil its contractual obligation.