A shop has 6 rows of lighting each with 42 fixtures. During a lighting retrofit it takes 2 electricians 70 minutes to change 1 fixture.

Question

How many electricians are required to change all of the fixtures in a 40 hour time period

Answer 1

Hi Joe,

A fun question:

A shop has 6 rows of lighting each with 42 fixtures. During a lighting retrofit it takes 2 electricians 70 minutes to change 1 fixture.

How many electricians are required to change all of the fixtures in a 40 hour time period

Let's start with what we know:

1. rows = 6
2. lights per row = 42
3. time for 2 electricians -or- 1 team to retrofit 1 light = 70 minutes
4. time allowed to complete the job = 40 hours -or- 40*60 = 2400 minutes

With this we can figure out how long it will take to retrofit all of the light fixtures:

1. 6 rows x 42 lights per row = 252 lights total
2. 252 lights x 70 minutes per light per team = 17640 minutes total to change all the light fixtures

Since we only have 2400 minutes to get the job done:

1. 17640 ÷ 2400 = 7.35 teams are needed

But in the real world we are not allowed to use only parts of people, so round up to 8 teams.

One last step:

1. 2 electricians per team x 8 teams = 16 electricians

With time left over for coffee and donuts!