Chapter 7 Design of Work Systems Flashcards
Job Design
Improves efficiency through analysis of the job’s work elements
Improves productivity through consideration of
Increases the quality of the final product or service
Increases worker satisfaction
Job Specialization
High degree of specialization means a: Narrow range of tasks, high degree of repetition, and supposedly greater efficiency
Examples: Seats Inc. watching a press cutting metal
Job Design Advantages for Management
Simplifies training
High productivity
Low wage costs
Job Design Advantages for Labor
Low education and skill requirements
Minimum responsibilities
Little mental effort needed
JD Disadvantages for Management
Difficult motivate quality
Worker dissatisfaction, possibly resulting in absenteeism, turnover, etc.
JD Disadvantages for Labor
Monotonous boring work
Limited opportunities for advancement
Little control over work
Little opportunity for self-fulfillment
JD Remedies for Boredom
Job enlargement – increases the number of tasks assigned to each employee
Job Rotation-allows workers to exchange jobs periodically
Job Enrichment-involves an increase in the level of responsibility for planning and coordination of tasks
JD Limitations to the Remedies
Many individuals prefer simple jobs Increased training costs Higher wage rates are required Increased accident rates may occur Savings must be greater than costs
JD Two Basic Causes of Accidents
Worker carelessness – not using protective equipment or improper use of tools
Accident hazards
Safety
JD Working Conditions
Temperature-depends upon humidity and air movement
Ventilation
Lighting
Noise
JD Ergonomics
Is the “study of work”
Studying people’s capabilities and limitations and designing jobs that can be done without injuring worker
Examples:
Gas fireplaces lifts up and down for different employee heights
JD Work Standards
Establishing prices and costs Motivating workers Comparing alternative process designs Scheduling Capacity planning Performance appraisal
What are Work Standards?
Time required for a trained worker, working at a normal rate of speed to perform a specialized task
What is Process Improvement?
Process improvement is the systematic study of the activities and flows of each process to improve it.
What is Process Reengineering?
Fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processing dramatically improving performance (The Goal) speed, quality, cost quality, service
Process Reengineering
Focus on critical processes
Provide strong leadership
Create a cross functional team
Design processes around information flows
Start from a clean slate – customer perspective
Questioning the Process
“It is always amazing how many of the things we do will never be missed. And nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.” Peter Drucker
What is Redesigning the Process?
Ideas for process redesign and improvement can be uncovered by asking six questions about each step in the process and about the process as a whole.
Redesigning the Process Six Questions
- What is being done?
- When is it being done?
- Who is doing it?
- Where is it being done?
- How is it being done?
- How well does it do on the various metrics of importance?
Redesigning the Process Six Questions II
Answers to the previous six questions are challenged by asking still another set of questions.
Why is the process even being done?
Why is it being done where it is being done?
Why is it being done when it is being done?
What is a Flowchart?
Flowcharts: A diagram that traces the flow of information, customers, equipment, or materials
What is a Process Chart?
Process chart: An organized way of documenting the activities performed by a person or group of people at a work station, with a customer, or on materials.
What are the five categories of Process Charts?
- Operations that change, create or add something.
- Transportation (materials handling): Moving something.
- Inspection: Checking or verifying something.
- Delays: Time spent awaiting further action.
- Storage: When something is put away until a later time.
When is a Proc Chart Payoff the Greatest?
Process has poor or unsafe working conditions
Process results in pollution or large amounts of waste materials
Process is bottleneck
Process consumes a lot of time
Process has considerable physical movement
Methods Analysis
Methods Analysis
Analyzing how a job gets done and looking for best way to do a job
Needed for changes in: tools, equipment, product design, materials, procedures. Also needed for introduction of new products, government regulations, accidents or quality problems
Guidelines for Selecting a Job to Study
Consider jobs that: Have a high labor content Are done frequently Are unsafe, tiring, unpleasant, and/or noisy Are designated as problems • Quality problems • Processing bottlenecks
What is a Stopwatch time study?
Used to develop a time standard based on observations of one worker taken over a number of cycles. Used for repetitive tasks.
What are the Basic steps in a time study?
- Define the task to be studied and inform the worker who will be studied
- Determine the number of cycles to observe
- Time the job, and rate the worker’s performance
- Compute the standard time
What is the Standard Time?
The amount of time it should take a qualified worker to complete a specified task, working at a sustainable rate, using given methods, tools and equipment, raw material inputs, and workplace arrangement.
Other Work Measurements
Elemental Standard Data Approach Procedure-can do before job begins. Based on elements with historical times.
Predetermined Time Standards-use of published data on standard elemental times.
What is Work Sampling?
Estimates proportions of time that a worker or machine spends on various activities
What are the eight steps in Work Sampling?
Eight steps including defining activities, observation form, initial sample size, random observation times, observation, and deciding if additional sampling is required
What is a Learning Curve?
The time required to perform a task decreases with increasing repetitions
The degree of improvement is a function of the task being done
• Short, routine tasks will show modest improvement relatively quickly
• Longer, more complex tasks will show improvement over a longer interval
Assumptions in Learning Curves
Direct labor required to produce n + 1 unit will always be less than the direct labor required for the nth unit
Direct labor requirements will decrease at a declining rate as cumulative production increases
The reduction in time will follow an exponential curve
Basic Premise in Learning Curves
Production time per unit is reduced by a fixed % each time production is doubled.
Applications of Learning Curves
Scheduling – the first time takes longer Negotiated purchasing Pricing new products Budgeting, purchasing and inventory planning Capacity planning
LC Cautions and Criticisms
- Learning rates may differ from organization to organization and by type of work
- Projections based on learning curves should be regarded as approximations of actual times
- Because time estimates are based on the first unit, care should be taken to ensure that the time is valid
- It is possible that at some point the curve might level off or even tip upward
- Users of learning curves fail to include carryover effects from previous experiences
