Work Measurement

Vital inputs for:

Manpower planning Reducing labour costs Scheduling Budgeting Designing incentive systems

Standard Time
Amount of time a qualified worker should spend to complete a specified task, working at sustainable rate, using given methods, tools and equipment, raw material and workplace

Most commonly used methods of work measurement:

Time study Historical times Predetermined data Work sampling

Work Measurement
Time Study
Most widely used method of work measurement Especially appropriate for short, repetitive tasks
Average of a few properly trained workers performed time are taken as the standard

Basic steps: Define the task to be studied, and inform the worker(s) who will be studied Determine the number of cycles to be observed Time the job and rate the performance Compute the standard time

Breakdown of work into elements

Work Measurement
Standard Elemental Time (SET)
derived from a firms own historical time study data
A time study department accumulates a file of elemental times that are common to many jobs After a certain point, many elemental times can be retrieved from the file Eliminate need for analysts to go through a complete time study to obtain those

Predetermined Time Standards (PDTS)

published data on standard elemental times
Commonly used system is Method-Time Measurement (MTM) MTM tables are based on extensive research of basic elemental times

Work Measurement
Work Sampling
is a technique for estimating the proportion of time that a worker or machine spends on various activities and the idle time.

appropriate for long, non-repetitive tasks Two primary uses:

Ratio-delay studies: concern the percentage of workers time that involves unavoidable delays Analysis of non-repetitive jobs: percentage of time an employee spends doing various jobs

Work Measurement
Observed Time (OT): simply the average of the recorded times

x OT n

Normal Time (NT): observed time adjusted for worker performance

NT OT * PR
Standard Time (ST): normal time required for a job plus
an allowance time for different delays

ST NT * AF

For job time For time worked

AF job 1 A
AFday 1 1 A