Southwest Tube (now called Webco Industries) is a fabricator of specialty tubes used in boilers and other equipment. Southwest buys the tubes in long segments and cuts, bends, cold draws, and welds the pieces to make what is needed for the products. A few years ago, Southwest Tube was facing tough competition. The prices were falling while the costs were rising. To improve productivity, consultants were brought in. They pointed out problems with labour turnover, absenteeism, weak supervision, staffing mismatch, lack of performance goals, and a dislike for the weekly rotating schedule as causes of the problem. One of the solutions tried, in addition to other improvements, was changing the work schedule to four 12-hour days followed by three days off. The productivity seemed to improve gradually. To ascertain this, the following data for two physically demanding work centres were collected starting the year before the change in work schedule. Question: Has workers' productivity in the two work centres increased? Explain.

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Cold Draw Department Weld Mill Department Labour Output Labour Output Year (1,000 hr) (1,000 ft) Year (1,000 hr) (1,000 ft) 228 18,269 132 22,434 1 234 19,576 157 34,777 183 17,633 102 26,715 150 18,870 77 25,227 2. 1, 2. 3.