Professional Documents
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Operations managemen
Chapter 14
Work Study/
Method study
Work Study- Method stud
Importance
Managing people within operations involves actual design
decisions about jobs, methods, relationships between jobs
and machines and systems of control and communication.
Work design involves complex "people" relationships
between operative staff, supervisors and specialists e.g.
engineering managers and staff who commission new
machines and maintain them. Other specialists may co-
ordinate health and safety systems or monitor performance
and plan maintenance
People are not mere extensions to machines or
horsepower to be switched on and off. A worker's
performance may be better than a machine's capability - yet
a machine may outstrip the human being for many tasks.
Work Study
Definition
People can be hurt/injured physically by operating
environments or trapped socially and psychologically in
them/by them. How operational systems are designed and
the jobs and performance relationships within them are of
great operational, economic and social importance. In this
context then work study is :
A collection of techniques used to examine wo
what is done and how it is done - so that there
systematic analysis of all the elements, factors, res
and relationships affecting the efficiency and
effectiveness of the work being studied.
Work Study-Objectives
Motion Study
Improve methods
It measures distance, or how much you move to do a job,
and how much you get done in a period of time
Time study
Establish standards
Looked at the average time it took an average worker
Users of Time Study have to establish standards, this
works in the service industry,
Relationship of Time &
Motion study to work study
Work Study
Time Study
Motion Study
Work Study- Method stud
Methods study
- is an analysis of ways of doing work. The memonic
SREDIM (a common-sense heuristic or general
problem-solving strategy) represents the method study
stages
1. select the tasks to study
2. record the facts about it
3. examine these
4. develop a new method
5. install/implement it
6. maintain it
Work Measurement
Definition
Work Measurement is a term which covers several
different ways of finding out how long a job or part of a job
should take to complete. It can be defined as the systematic
determination, through the use of various techniques, of the
amount of effective physical and mental work in terms of
work units in a specified task. The work units usually are
given in standard minutes or standard hours.
Why should we need to know how long a job should
take? The answer to this question lies in the importance of
time in our everyday life. We need to know how long it
should take to walk to the train station in the morning, one
needs to schedule the day's work and even when to take out
the dinner from the oven.
Work Measurement
Definition
In the business world these standard times are needed
for:
planning the work of a workforce,
manning jobs, to decide how many workers it would need
to complete certain jobs,
scheduling the tasks allocated to people
costing the work for estimating contract prices and
costing the labor content in general
calculating the efficiency or productivity of workers - and
from this:
providing fair returns on possible incentive bonus
payment schemes.
Work Measurement
Techniques
On what are these standard times set? They are set, not
on how long a certain individual would take to complete a
task but on how long a trained, experienced worker would
take to do the task at a defined level of pace or performance.
Who sets these standard times? Specially trained and
qualified observers set these times, using the most
appropriate methods or techniques for the purpose i.e.
"horses for courses".
How it is done depends on circumstances that obtain. The
toolkit available to the comprehensively trained observer is
described below.
Work Measurement
Techniques
Definition:
PMT Systems are methods of setting basic times for doing
basic human activities necessary for carrying out a job or
task.
The definition in BS 3138, Glossary of Terms Used in
Work Study is: 'Tables of time data at defined rates of
working for classified human movements and mental
activities. Times for an operation or task are derived using
precise conventions. Predetermined motion time data have
also been developed for common combinations of basic
human movements and mental activities'.
Work Measurement
Predetermined motion time system (PM
End Of
Chapter 14