Work Design and
Measurement
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You should be able to:
LO 7.1
LO 7.2
LO 7.3
LO 7.4
LO 7.5
LO 7.6
Explain the importance of work design
Compare and contrast the two basic approaches to job design
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of standardization
Describe behavioral approaches to job design
Discuss the impact of working conditions on job design
Compare the advantages and disadvantages of time-based and outputbased pay systems
LO 7.7 Explain the purpose of methods analysis and describe how methods
studies are performed
LO 7.8 Describe four commonly used techniques for motion study
LO 7.9 Define a standard time
LO 7.10 Describe and compare time study methods and perform calculations
LO 7.11 Describe work sampling and perform calculations
LO 7.12 Compare stopwatch time study and work sampling
7-2
 Job design
 The act of specifying the contents and methods of jobs




What will be done in a job
Who will do the job
How the job will be done
Where the job will be done
 Importance
 Organization’s are dependent on human efforts to accomplish their
goals
 Many job design topics are relevant to continuous and productivity
improvement
 Objectives
 Productivity
 Safety
 Quality of work life
LO 7.1
7-3
 Efficiency School
 Emphasizes a systematic, logical approach to job design
 A refinement of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s scientific
management concepts
 Behavioral School
 Emphasizes satisfaction of needs and wants of
employees
LO 7.2
7-4
 Specialization
 Work that concentrates on some aspect of a product or
service
Advantages
For management:
1. Simplifies training
2. High productivity
3. Low wage costs
For employees:
1. Low education and skill requirements
2. Minimum responsibility
3. Little mental effort needed
Disadvantages
For management:
1. Difficult to motivate quality
2. Worker dissatisfaction, possibly
resulting in absenteeism, high
turnover, disruptive tactics, poor
attention to quality
LO 7.3
For employees:
1. Monotonous work
2. Limited opportunities for
advancement
3. Little control over work
4. Little opportunity for self-fulfillment
7-5
 Job Enlargement

Giving a worker a larger portion of the total task by
horizontal loading
 Job Rotation

Workers periodically exchange jobs
 Job Enrichment

LO 7.4
Increasing responsibility for planning and coordination
tasks, by vertical loading
7-6
 Quality of work life affects not only workers’ overall
sense of well-being and contentment, but also their
productivity
 Important aspects of quality of work life:
 How a worker gets along with co-workers
 Quality of management
 Working conditions
 Compensation
LO 7.5
7-7
TIME-BASED
Advantages
Disadvantages
OUTPUT-BASED
Advantages
Disadvantages
Management
Worker
1.
2.
3.
4.
Stable labor costs
Easy to administer
Simple to compute pay
Stable Output
1.
2.
Stable pay
Less pressure to produce
than under output system
1.
No incentive for workers to
increase output
1.
Extra efforts not rewarded
1.
2.
Lower cost per unit
Greater output
1.
2.
Pay related to efforts
Opportunity to earn more
1.
Wage computation more
difficult
Need to measure output
Quality may suffer
Difficult to incorporate wage
increases
Increased problems with
scheduling
1.
2.
Pay fluctuates
Workers may be penalized
because of factors beyond
their control (e.g., machine
breakdown)
2.
3.
4.
5.
LO 7.6
7-8
 Methods Analysis
 Analyzing how a job gets done
 It begins with an analysis of the overall operation
 It then moves from general to specific details of the job
concentrating on
 Workplace arrangement
 Movement of workers and/or materials
LO 7.7
7-9
 Motion study
 Systematic study of the human motions used to perform an
operation
 Motion Study Techniques
 Motion study principles – guidelines for designing motion-
efficient work procedures
 Analysis of therbligs – basic elemental motions into which a job
can be broken down
 Micromotion study – use of motion pictures and slow motion to
study motions that otherwise would be too rapid to analyze
 Charts – activity or process charts, simo charts (simultaneous
motions)
LO 7.8
7-10
 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.
 Commonly used work measurement techniques
 Stopwatch time study
 Historical times
 Predetermined data
 Work sampling
LO 7.9
7-11
 Stopwatch Time Study
 Used to develop a time standard based on observations of one
worker taken over a number of cycles.
 Standard Elemental Times
 are derived from a firm’s own historical time study data.
 Predetermined time standards
 involve the use of published data on standard elemental times.
 Work sampling
 a technique for estimating the proportion of time that a worker or
machine spends on various activities and idle time.
LO 7.10
7-12
 Used to develop a time standard based on observations of
one worker taken over a number of cycles.
 Basic steps in a time study:
1.
2.
3.
4.
LO 7.10
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
7-13
 Work sampling is a technique for estimating the
proportion of time that a worker or machine spends
on various activities and the idle time.
 Work sampling does not require timing an activity or involve
continuous observation of the activity
 Uses:
1. ratio-delay studies which concern the percentage of a worker’s
time that involves unavoidable delays or the proportion of time
a machine is idle.
2. analysis of non-repetitive jobs.
LO 7.11
7-14
Advantages
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Observations are spread out over a period of time, making results less susceptible to short-term
fluctuations
There is little or no disruption of work
Workers are less resentful
Studies are less costly and less time-consuming, and the skill requirements of the analyst are
much less
Studies can be interrupted without affecting the results
No timing device is required
It is well suited for nonrepetitive tasks
Disadvantages
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
There is much less detail on the elements of a job
Workers may alter their work patterns when they spot the observer, thereby invalidating the
results
In many cases, there is no record of the method used by the worker
Observers may fail to adhere to a random schedule of observations
It is not well suited for short, repetitive tasks
Much time may be required to move from one workplace to another and back to satisfy the
randomness requirement
LO 7.12
7-15