Custom App woes in production

Hi there, I've built a custom app. I have a PHP file which accepts JSON and passes it to a function:

    include('admin/runtime.php');

    $Membership = new Memberships;

    $member = $Membership->createMembership($_POST);

And then the function inserts the entry in the table:

public function createMembership($data){

        $member= array();

        foreach($data as $key=>$value){
            $member['membership'.ucFirst($key)] = $value;
        }

        $Member = $this->db->insert('swt_swt_memberships', $member);

}

Locally it takes about 0.2s in production it takes about 17seconds. Any ideas?

Perch Runway: 2.8.13, PHP: 5.4.45, MySQL: mysqlnd 5.0.10 - 20111026 - $Id: c85105d7c6f7d70d609bb4c000257868a40840ab $, with PDO
Server OS: Linux, cgi-fcgi
Installed apps: content (2.8.13), assets (2.8.13), categories (2.8.13), collection_9 (2.8.13), perch_blog (4.6), perch_events (1.9.2), perch_forms (1.8.3), perch_gallery (2.8.6), perch_mailchimp (2.0.1), collection_6 (2.8.13), perch_moltin_orders (1.0), perch_moltin_products (1.0), swt_reports (1.0), swt_membership (2.1), perch_moltin (1.0), collection_5 (2.8.13), perch_comments (1.2), perch_members (1.4), perch_twitter (3.5.1)
App runtimes: <?php $apps_list = array( 'content', 'categories', 'geolocate', 'donations', 'perch_comments', 'perch_gallery', 'perch_forms', 'perch_members', 'perch_mailchimp', 'perch_twitter', 'perch_blog', 'perch_events', 'url_helper', 'perch_moltin', 'swt_membership' );