Operator Attrition Cost & Retention Payback

How to read this sheet

The learning curve loss is the gap between the efficiency of the operator who left and the average efficiency of her replacement over the ramp, valued at the contribution a standard minute earns. It is measured against the trained operator rather than against a hundred percent, because the line was never getting a hundred and charging turnover for the difference would flatter every other number on the sheet. Paid induction is counted as wage and the ramp weeks are not, because during the ramp the operator is producing - counting both would charge the same hours twice. Ramp average efficiency is the average across the whole ramp and not the efficiency on day one; this site gives away a Wright curve calculator that projects that path from piece counts, and this tool prices what that calculator describes. The retention arithmetic holds the cost of a leaver constant and scales the saving with the reduction in leavers, which is the generous reading: in practice the operators who leave first are often the newest and cheapest to replace, so a reduction in the headline rate saves less than proportionally. A wage increase is paid to everyone on the roll and saves only on the leavers avoided, which is why it so rarely pays for itself on turnover alone - and that is not an argument against paying more, only against justifying it this way. The rate the increase would have to achieve is returned so the claim can be judged rather than assumed. Nothing here counts what turnover does to quality, to the supervisors who spend their day training rather than balancing, or to the customers who receive the output of a line that is permanently half new.