IE 324 PROCESS MANEGEMENT PROJECT:
PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT BY WORK STUDY
TECHNIQUE: A CASE ON LEATHER PRODUCTS
INDUSTRY OF BANGLADESH
05.05.2020
GAZI UNIVERSITY
ENGINEERING FACULTY
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Understanding Research and Study…………………………………………………2
Chapter 2: Methodology and Equations Used………………………………………………….4
Chapter 3: Analysis of Work Study and Conclusion…………………………………………..5
1
Chapter 1: Understanding Research and Study
Why Leather Products Industry?
In Bangladesh, the leather and leather products industry plays a crucial role for the country's
economic development. The authors consider it necessary to increase productivity in order
to maintain this positive growth in the industry. For this, unnecessary excess work in
production should be minimized. The production system of the leather products industry can
be illustrated by the following scheme (Figure 1).
Productivity
According to the article, efficiency can be defined as the ratio between the output of wealth
and the input of resources used in the production process.
 Productivity = OUTPUT / INPUT (1)
Productivity analysis is important for all sectors. Increasing efficiency is important to make
more profit from limited resources. Productivity increase is the continuous improvement
process of all kinds of activities. The increase in efficiency can be considered as an increase
in profit.
Various methods are listed in the article to increase efficiency. These can be classified as;
• classification of elimination
• repair of ineffective process
• simplification of the method
• optimizing the system
• reducing diversity
• maximizing participation quality or response speed
• reduction of installation time
2
In the article, 'Work Study' is classified as in Figure 2.
The research team initially selected a special production line in which a particular product
was produced (Ladies Bag). They observed all special operations with the help of a
stopwatch. After observing all the operations, they identified the current problem with the
critical query technique. After identifying the problems, they developed a new method or
process for certain products. They tried to balance the line by reducing the work content
with critical analysis and time study.
The research team used the conceptual table in Figure 3 to analyze a particular production
line. After observing the duration of each transaction, the standard time of each transaction
was calculated, including ratings and two types of permissions.
This research had two main objectives. These:
1. To analyze the production system with the help of work study technique to increase
efficiency.
2. Identify the current problem on a particular production line and develop a new
system with the help of critical analysis.
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Chapter 2: Methodology and Equations Used
Observed time: Time taken to perform an operation or combination of operations obtained
by direct measurement.
Time selected: Time selected to represent the time group representing an operation or
study group by calculating the mean, median, or mode.
Rating: Rating is the evaluation of the employee performance ratio according to the rate
concept corresponding to the standard speed of the observer. The rating scale used in this
study is given in table 1.
Basic time: The basic time is the minimum time required to theoretically produce a unit of
output.
 Basic Time = Observed Time x Observed Rating/ Standard Rating (2)
Standard time: Standard time is the total time a job must be completed at standard
performance.
 Standard Time = Basic Time + Allowances (3)
For allowances, we consider 15% relaxation allowances and 3% contingency allowances.
Relaxation allowances: Relaxation Allowance is a supplement to the basic time to develop
the employee with the opportunity to get rid of the physiological and psychological effects
of performing a particular operation and to pay attention to personal needs. The amount of
tolerance depends on the nature of the job. Usually the relaxation allowance is 15% of the
basic time, added to calculate the standard time from the basic time.
Contingency allowances: A contingency allowance is a very small amount of time that can
be included in a standard time study. In this study, the probability of 3% probability of the
basic time was evaluated to calculate the standard time.
 Efficiency = Minutes Output / Minutes Input (4)
Increasing efficiency =
 [(The efficiency of proposed line – Present Eff.)/Present Eff. ] * 100 (5)
% of work content reduction per piece=
[
]
 (Present work content/piece – Proposed work content/piece)
(Present work content/piece
*100
Increasing productivity at 100% capacity=
 [(Proposed std output – Existing output) / Existing output] * 100
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(7)
(6)
Chapter 3: Analysis of Work Study and Conclusion
The authors chose Picard Bangladesh Ltd, a Bangladesh-Germany joint venture for research.
For this research study, they chose a women's bag to observe each operation, along with a
time study. After observing all the operations with time studies, they observed that the
selected female bag production consisted of 60 separate elements. Time study was
performed for each operation. The names, descriptions and results of the transactions are
shown in Table 2.
When we look at Table 2, the number of workers is 97 and the average ratings of workers
are 81.33. Each station can have different numbers of workers, and since their capacity
varies from station to station, they are not proportional to the number of workers. We see
that Total Basic Time is 6787 and Total Standard Time is 8004. In other words, the average
Basic Time for each element is 113.12 and the average Standard Time is 133.4. In addition,
we can see in Table 2 that production is limited due to the shortage of capacity in some
places. Some operations are repeating themselves.
The researchers measured 5 times for each operation and calculated the basic time for each
worker using equation (2). Then they converted this basic time to standard time using
equation (3). They added two types of tolerances to calculate standard time.
The graphical representation of the capacity of each station is shown in Figure 5.
When we look at Figure 5, we see that there is a scattered capacity in the stations. For
example, we see that there are 1 operation on 2000, 4 on 1500-2000, 9 on 1000-1500, 19 on
500-1000, and 26 on 0-500.
As a result of the work on the selected assembly line, the line was balanced and increased
efficiency. The proposed line balance calculation is given in table 4.
When we examine Table 4, we can see that the number of operations, which is 60,
decreased to 53. This means that some operations have been combined or removed because
some are unnecessary. In addition, capacities were balanced by making arrangements in the
number of workers in operations. For example, on the existing line, only one worker works
for the Cutting All Leather operation, and 3 workers work on the proposed line. Thus, the
bottleneck problem caused by the initial capacity shortage was solved.
If we examine Table 3, we can observe the changes. Since the use of a brush in the adhesion
processes slowed down the process, they replaced it with a spray adhesive. Here is a second
suggestion: If there are parts that will not affect the production and will not be processed
again (bottom part, inner part etc.), we can move them to a separate line like a bonding
section and reduce the number of people with machines and distribute the workforce to
other operations.
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Result
The number of daily production in the current line was 240. The working hours of the factory
are 8 hours. 97 workers are employed in this line. Using equation (1), we can see that the
efficiency of this line is about 2.5 bags / day.
The factory has 48,000 cent minutes working hours. The job content per bag is 8004 cents
minutes. Standard output at 100% efficiency is 582 pieces bag per day.
As a result, if we calculate the efficiency using equation (3), we find 41.23%.
While the working content per piece was 80.04 minutes in the current line, the operations in
Table 3 were performed and reduced to 71.03 minute per piece. This recommended line is
656 bags per day with 100% efficiency standard output. If we use equation (6), we see that
efficiency has increased to 12.71%.
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