Design of Work Systems
Chapter 7
Work design
- Job design
- Work measurement
- Establish time standards
- Worker compensation
- Human resources greatest asset
- Largest number of employees in operations
- Must consider the jobs people do
Job Design
- Specify content and methods
- Goal - productive and efficient
- Who will do the job,
- How will the job be done, and
- Where will the job be done
Job Design
- Job design success
- Experienced personnel
- Consistent with organization’s goals
- Written
- Understood and agreed to by management
Job Design Models
- Efficiency model - economic
- Taylor and scientific management
- Reduce decision making by workers
- Behavioral model - satisfaction
- Satisfaction of employee wants and needs
- Efficiency approach not appropriate in all cases
- Concern with uninteresting jobs and lack of control
Behavioral Approach
- Job enlargement
- larger portion of the total task
- horizontal loading
- Job rotation
- workers exchange jobs
- Job enrichment
- increase responsibility for planning & coordination
- vertical loading
Specialization
- Goal - focus efforts and become proficient
- Jobs have a narrow scope
- Two extremes, professionals and line workers
- High productivity and low unit costs
- Limited mental requirements
- Frustrated employees
Specialization Advantages
- For management
- Simplifies training
- High productivity
- Low wage costs
- For labor
- Low education & skills
- Minimum responsibilities
- Little mental effort
Specialization Disadvantages
- For management:
- Difficult to motivate quality
- Worker dissatisfaction
- For labor
- Monotonous work
- Limited advancement
- Little control
- Little opportunity for self-fulfillment
Team-Based Approaches
- Use of teams is a significant change
- Self-directed teams (self-managed)
- Increase teamwork & employee involvement
- Empowered to make changes
- Workers are experts in the processes
- Teamwork requires training
- Reduce managers
- Improved responsiveness
Team-Based Approaches
- Football team
- Baseball team
- Soccer team
- Tennis doubles team
Methods analysis
- Start of the job design process
- Reasons for:
- Technology changes
- Product design changes, new products
- Changes in materials or procedures
- Gov’t regulations or procedures
- Accidents, quality, etc.
- Productivity improvements
- Existing and new jobs
Methods analysis procedures
- Identify operation & gather information
- Discuss job with operator & supervisors
- Study & document present method
- Analyze the job
- Propose new methods
- Install new methods
- Follow-up
Which process to study?
- Increase productivity and reduce costs
- Jobs that:
- have a high labor cost
- are done frequently
- are unsafe, tiring, unpleasant, noisy
- are designated as problems
- bottlenecks, quality problems
Documenting the process
- Use charts, graphs, and verbal descriptions
- Standard charts
- Flow process chart
- focus on movements of operator or materials
- identify nonproductive parts of the process
- Worker-machine charts
- focus on idle time of worker and machine
Flow process chart
- Review & examine overall sequence
- Helpful questions
- Why a delay or storage?
- How can travel time/distances be reduced?
- Can materials handling be reduced?
- Could it be rearranged?
- Can similar activities be grouped?
- Could more equipment help?
- Does the worker have ideas for improvement?
Installing the improved method
- What to change
- What to change it to
- How to initiate the change
- Convince management
- Convince workers
- Provide training
- Plan the implementation
Follow-up
- Ensure perpetuation of the change
- Visit/review the operation after time
Motion study
- Systematic study of human motions used in an operation
- Eliminate unnecessary motions, determine best sequence
- Techniques
- Motion study
- Analysis of therbligs
- Micromotion
- Charts
Motion study principles
- Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
- Use of the body
- Arrangement of workplace
- Design of tools and equipment
Therbligs
- Basic elemental motions
- Eliminate, combine or rearrange
- Search, select, grasp, hold, transport, release
- Inspect, position, plan, rest, delay
- Lots of work
- Short repetitive jobs
Micromotion study
- Use camera and slow motion
- Repetitive operations
- Simo charts (left-hand, right hand)
Working Conditions
- Temperature and humidity
- Ventilation
- Illumination
- Color
- Noise and vibration
- Work breaks
- Safety
Work measurement
- Stopwatch time study
- one worker over several cycles
- Standard elemental times
- accumulated historical data
- Predetermined time standards
- published data
- Work sampling
- Estimate proportion of time spent on activities
Compensation
- Time-based system
- Output-based system
- Individual incentive plans
- Group incentive plans
- Knowledge-based pay systems
- Management compensation
Form of incentive plan
- Accurate
- Easy to apply and understand
- Consistent
Flow process chart