Northmere Educational Printing produces short runs of textbooks. Its current crews complete each order from start to finish. A proposed arrangement would assign workers to repeated stages of the printing process. Table 1 records results under each arrangement.
| Measure | Crews complete each order | Repeated specialist tasks |
|---|---|---|
| Labour hours per 500-copy order | 32 | 23 |
| Orders delivered by the agreed date | 88% | 95% |
| Copies needing reprinting | 1.5% | 3.8% |
| Different textbook formats handled per week | 18 | 12 |
| Hours lost waiting for a preceding stage each week | 2 | 8 |
Assess the case for Northmere Educational Printing moving away from crews handling complete orders and assigning workers to repeated stages. Use Table 1.
84 exam-style questions on AQA GCSE Economics 1.2 Resource allocation, covering 1.2.1a Markets, 1.2.1b Allocation of resources, 1.2.1c Factor and product markets, 1.2.2a Primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, 1.2.2b Goods and services, 1.2.3a Specialisation and the division of labour, 1.2.3b How and why producers specialise, and 1.2.3c Costs and benefits of the division of labour. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.