What is Job Design?

 Job design is the function of specifying

the work activities of an individual or
group in an organizational setting.

 The objective of job design is to

develop jobs that meet the requirements
of the organization and its technology and
that satisfy the jobholder’s personal and
individual requirements.
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 Decisions in Job Design
Who What Where When Why How

Organizational
Mental and Geographic
Time of day; rationale for Method of
physical locale of the
Tasks to be time of the job; object- performance
characteristics organization;
performed occurrence in ives and mot- and
of the location of
the work flow ivation of the motivation
work force work areas
worker

Ultimate
Job
Structure
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 Trends in Job Design
1. Quality control as part of the worker's job
2. Cross-training workers to perform multiskilled jobs
3. Employee involvement and team approaches to
designing and organizing work
4. "Informating" ordinary workers through
telecommunication networks and computers
5. Extensive use of temporary workers
6. Automation of heavy manual work
7. Organizational commitment to providing meaningful
and rewarding jobs for all employees

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 Behavioral Considerations in
Job Design

 Degree of Specialization

 Job Enrichment (vs. Enlargement)

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 Sociotechnical Systems

Skill Variety
Worker/
Process Feedback Group
Technology
Task Identity Needs
Needs
Task Autonomy

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 Physical Considerations
 Attitude isn’t everything
 Can a worker perform physically?

 Work Physiology
 Sets work-rest cycles based on energy
expenditure

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 Work Methods
A Production
Process

Ultimate
Workers Interacting Worker at a Fixed
with Other Workers Job Workplace
Design

Worker Interacting
with Equipment

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 Work Measurement:
Why do We Need to Set Work Standards?

1. To schedule work and allocate capacity

2. To provide an objective basis for motivating

the workforce and measuring their
performance

3. To bid for new contracts and to evaluate

performance on existing ones

4. To provide benchmarks for improvement

Operations Strategy/Process
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 Time Study:
The Search for Measurable Job Elements

 Short in duration--but long enough to time

 Separate worker actions from machine

actions

 Define any delays by the operator or

equipment into separate elements

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 Determining Standard Times

 Calculate them yourself

 Use elemental standard-time data
 Use pre-determined motion-time data
systems

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 Time Study Example Problem
 You want to determine the standard time for a job.
The employee selected for the time study has
produced 20 units of product in 8 working hours.
 Your observations made the employee nervous and
you estimate that the employee worked about 10
percent faster than what is a normal pace for the
job. Allowances for the job represent 25 percent of
the normal time.

 Question: What are the normal and standard

times for this job?
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 Work Sampling
 Use inference to make statements about
work activity based on a sample of the
activity.

 Output of Work Sampling:

 Performance Measurement
 Time Standards

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 Advantage of Work Sampling over
Time Study
 Several work sampling studies may be conducted
simultaneously by one observer.
 The study may be temporarily delayed at any time.
 The observer need not be a trained analyst unless
determining a time standard.
 No timing devices are required.
 Work of a long cycle time may be studied with a fewer
observer hours.
 Minimizes effects of short-period variations and
influence by the operator or worker.

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 Basic Compensation Systems
 Hourly Pay

 Straight Salary

 Piece Rate

 Commissions

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 Financial Incentive Plans
 Individual and Small-Group Plans
 Output measures
 Quality measures
 Pay for knowledge
 Organization-wide Plans
 Profit sharing
 Gainsharing
 Bonus based on controllable costs or units of
output
 May be part of participative management

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 Scanlon Plan
Basic Elements
Total labor cost
Ratio =
 The ratio Sales value of production

 Standard for judging business performance

 The bonus
 Depends on reduction in costs below the preset
ratio

 The production committee

 The screening committee
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 Levi’s Jeans Case
 Moved away from piece rates.
 Team concept put in place in their factories.
 Brought in consultants to “reengineer”
team process.
 Questions
 What went wrong with the team process?
 What should have been done differently?
 Was the final result inevitable?

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 Business Process
Reengineering

 “Reengineering is the fundamental

rethinking and radical redesign of
business processes to achieve
dramatic improvements in critical,
contemporary measures of
performance such as cost, quality,
service, and speed.”
Source: Hammer, Michael and James Champy (1993) Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for
Business Revolution. New York: Harper

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 Key Words
 Fundamental
 Why do we do what we do?
 Radical
 Business reinvention vs. business improvement
 Dramatic
 Reengineering should be brought in “when a need
exists for heavy blasting.”
 Business Process
 a collection of activities that takes inputs and
creates an output that is of value to a customer.
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Business Process Reengineering
Decide What Business
Continuous Senior We Are In
Improvement Management
Or
Reengineering? Middle Eliminate An
Existing Process
Management

Supervisory Replace An
Management Existing Process

Improve An
Workers Existing Process
 Principles of Reengineering
 Organize around outcomes, not tasks
 Put the decision point where the work is
performed, and build control into the process
 Merge information-processing work into the
work that produces the information
 Treat geographically dispersed resources as
though they were centralized
 Link parallel activities instead of integrating their
results
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 The Reengineering Process (1 of 2)

1. State a Case for Action

2. Identify the Process for Reengineering

3. Evaluate Enablers of Reengineering

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 The Reengineering Process (2 of 2)

4. Create a New Process Design

5. Understand the Current Process

(high level only)

6. Implement the Reengineered Process

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 Reengineering & Continuous Improvement

Reengineering Continuous Improvement

Similarities
Basis of analysis Process Process
Performance measurement Rigorous Rigorous
Organizational change Significant Significant
Behavioral change Significant Significant
Time investment Substantial Substantial
Differences
Level of change Radical Incremental
Starting point Clean slate Existing process
Participation Top-down Bottom-up
Typical scope Broad, cross-functional Narrow, within functions
Risk High Moderate
Primary enabler Information technology Statistical control
Type of change Cultural and Structural Cultural

Source: Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press from Process Innovation
Reengineering Work Through Information Technology by Thomas H. Davenport. Boston: 1993
p. 51. Copyright 1993 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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 Integrating Reengineering and
Continuous Improvement
 Sequence Change Initiatives

 Create a Portfolio of Process Change Programs

 Limit the Scope of Work Design

 Undertake Improvement through Innovation

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 A System of Process Improvement:
Continuous Improvement & Reengineering

Productivity

time
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 Re-engineering:
Current Situation

 Specialization E D
F
 Lots of handoffs
(“white space”) C
G
 Lots of opportunity
for defects
A B

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 The Re-engineered Process

Ownership
C
B D


 Reduced
handoffs A
 Reduced cycle
time and
G E
defects
F
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 The Reengineering Process

Why is it that we accept a 4 week

wait to see a doctor, but in the
mortgage business, the consumer
dictates the closing dates to the
mortgage company?

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 Six Sigma: DMAIC vs. DMADV
Define

Measure

Analyze
Continuous Improvement Reengineering

Improve Design

Control Validate

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