Commonwealth Electric and Plumbing Services Commonwealth Electric and Plumbing Services (CEPS) provides residential electricity and plumbing repair services. Each day the company receives calls from customers who encounter issues and need repairs in these two specialties. These specialties are quite different as indicated by the distinguished training that is provided to electricians and plumbers in order to obtain their respective certification. Consequently, CEPS employs two separate pools of professionals, electricians and plumbers. Due to the nature of malfunctions customers calls are random. Each day CEPS receives as little as one call and as many as ten calls for electricity repair requests. The number of daily calls follow a Normal distribution with mean and standard deviation of 5.5 and 1.5, respectively. The distribution of the number of calls for plumbing service requests is the same. Each employee can service two calls of his/her profession in a day. Because the number of calls is unpredictable and changes from day to day CEPS contemplates how many employees of each profession they should hire. On the one hand, hiring sufficient employees to respond to any number of calls will keep many of them idle often. On the other hand, not having enough employees to respond to a substantial number of calls may result in bad reputation and potential loss of customers. Consequently, CEPS has decided to provide a combined service level (defined as the probability to meet the entire daily demand) of 64% by providing a service level of 80% for each specialty. How many electricians and how many plumbers should they hire? A consultant from the University of Richmond reviewed CEPS data and noted that the (distribution of) calls for electricians and plumbers are independent. Consequently, he recommended CEPS to cross-train their employees so each one will be able to respond to any type of call (electrical or plumbing). CEPS commented that the employees will resist to such an increase in their responsibilities unless it will be accompanied with a 15% wage increase which will make this option financially prohibitive given that they wish to maintain a combined service level of 64%. What is the largest wage premium that will make cross training financially feasible?