Workplace absenteeism is a significant employer issue that human resources practitioners deal with. It creates not only operational problems but also moral problems among coworkers who are called upon to pick up the slack. For this reason, most companies carefully track various measures of absenteeism. Consider, for example, a small manufacturing facility located in Windsor. For 35 consecutive weeks (defined as Monday through Friday), below are given the weekly number of frontline employees absent (read the data from left to right and then down, i.e. 13, 12, 8, etc.).

13 12 8 14 14 10 12 8 16 12

10 6 11 8 5 12 11 14 14 13

11 9 8 30 11 13 5 15 7 9

13 10 9 15 13

a) Which type of attribute control chart would you use to monitor this data? Calculate the control limits for the chart? Does the process appear to be in control? (Note: Plotting the chart is not required, just manually check for possible out-of-control points).

b) It turns out during the 24th week, there was a major Monday night football game. The desire to attend and watch this game is legendary in the area. In light of this information, establish (calculate) the trial (or prospective) control limits for this chart.