• attitude of workers towards performing ‘‘long tasks’’;
• normative and union agreements that enact constraints on the technical saturation degree (ts);
• space limits on the shop floors;
• payback point for the investment needed, thanks to better saturation of labour and the reduction of the defect rate in the final product.
For the same production volume, the choices can be different, depending on the location of activities, the labour cost per unit and the attitude of workers.
• workers be integrated gradually, with opportune training on the job and good support from the expert workers, with specific technical courses in advance if necessary.
For this purpose, Manufacturing and Human Resources Departments must cooperate closely.
Preliminary training, on-the-job training and the correct assignment of tasks and roles will be determinant in speeding up the ‘‘learning curve’’ (see Chap. 8); the speed of the start of production ramp-up, which contributes to the guarantee of the new products’ ‘‘time to market’’ target, depends on it.
The progressive evolution in the organization of human resources, or so-called
‘‘lean organization’’, has determined and will determine in the future a deep change in the internal relationships and agreements with the unions. In modern enterprise, collaboration of employees is obtained by involving people in improvement activities and objective evaluation of individual performances, according to attitudes and on-the-job behaviour.
For production employees, it is important to evaluate:
• availability and collaboration in learning technical instructions and helping colleagues under training;
• degree of attention in avoiding errors affecting the quality level of the final product (self-control);
• capacity to advance proposals that contribute to the product and continuous improvement of the process;
• punctuality and diligent continuity.
This criterion of evaluation is simple and clear. Tellingly, it is the same by which the ‘‘artisan master’’ evaluates the apprentice!
Even in the biggest enterprises, these evaluations should be done by those directly responsible, supported methodologically by the Human Resources Department. In addition to the economic incentives, it is important to offer opportunity of professional growth to foster availability and collaboration.
Reprimands for bad behavior or poor work should be done with respect, even when necessarily severe. Those responsible must communicate directly and thus inject a sense of motivation into the disciplinary amends. To be effective, these amends should be ‘‘exceptions’’. If they become too common, suppositions for creating a positive climate for internal relationships will no longer exist. In this case, it is necessary to intervene from more than one direction:method and working conditions, internal communication, and involving people in target achievements and training activities.
If the ‘‘working teams’’ are unstable and there are too many of them, it becomes harder to evaluate, correct mistakes and foster training activities. For this reason as well, it is important to deploy production activities, avoiding critical situations.
Quality of working environment (spaces, lighting, climate…) helps collabora- tion and the achievement of quality targets. For this reason, modern enterprises engage in specific studies and investments.
Let us now talk of rewarding workers. Historically, the reward system was used for individuals ‘‘doing piecework’’: ‘‘the more you produce, the more you are rewarded’’. Again, this policy has been limited to small manufacturing enterprises and artisans.
In bigger manufacturing industries, where work is organized through ‘‘taylo- ristic’’ criteria, reward policies have been extended to larger groups of workers, interconnected and involved in the same productive process. The impact of these reward policies, based on labour efficiency (g), has been progressively reduced during the last decades. This fact is due not only to the opposition of the unions, but also to organizational changes that have occurred in the factories.
In fact, when resources required for the production plan are assigned and operations work in a ‘‘one-piece-flow’’, it is clear that the productive output—for the different stages of the process—is pre-determined and controlled on a standard basis. It is not allowed for a single worker to work at a lower speed than that required by the working cycle time (WCT), but neither that he work slightly faster, the latter for the purpose of evident regularity and stability of the production flow.
These considerations are relative to all mass production of complex products such as cars, commercial and industrial vehicles, motorbikes, agricultural means, domestic appliances….
Considering all of the above, it is important to consider that the reward policies of economic groups are very useful to the enterprise when they are based on indicators that quantify performances clearly and realistically.
Referring to the previous definitions, some group rewarding factors can be:
(a) overall equipment efficiency (OEE);
(b) degree of productive labour utilizationg/ (1+i);
(c) quality indicators and cost of non-quality.
Another reward policy could be a collective annual prize, based on eco- nomic results within the same Business Unit or at the corporate level.
This last reward system—generally called a result prize—is applied by very big enterprises and normally is the object of specific union agreements, based on the logic of involving employees in corporate economic results.
The effect of these rewards on salary depends not only on the enterprise’s policies, but also on agreements with the unions in accepting that a variable quote of the salary be linked to the enterprise’s economic results (including the risk of withdrawing in case of failure).
Economic rewards are a part of the larger theme of participation and motivation of human resources to achieve a company’s results. This argument is mainly a topic of Company Organization and Human Resources Development. Here, we only underline how to prevent the risks derived from an insufficient motivation of the employees due to repetitive and uninvolving tasks.
First of all, it must be considered that a single error due to lack of attention or sense of responsibility can generate a serious quality defect or production stop- page, or a delay in delivery. So, the risks for the company as a result of worker disaffection can be very serious. From this, we can derive the importance of obtaining collaboration from all employees, fostering a spirit of teamwork to help prevent critical events.
A good information technology system on the shop floor helps establish a sense of responsibility, involving employees in the presentation and evaluation of results achieved month by month, in terms of quantity and quality of the products and discussing customer problems (internal and external) due to delays in delivery or manufacturing failures.
Finally, we map out in seven points the best ways for a good leader to motivate his charges to engage in performing their tasks in the production process:
1. informing and training workers to perform their assigned tasks properly by applying the working procedures;
2. determining the right working tools and personal protection devices and initi- ating their use;
3. prompt attention in detecting errors and helping the workers to correct prevent them;
4. assuring that safety and sanitary regulations be respected and preventing risk of accidents and damage to workers’ health;
5. establishing consistent attendance and behaviour on the job, adopting disci- plinary amends whenever regulations are repeatedly disrespected;
6. presenting and evaluating results obtained by the working team (quality level, efficiency…);
7. collecting proposals for improvement and responding to them when possible.
To do this properly, managers and those responsible for production should have an attitude towards their relationship with the various levels of workers and overseers that is both sensitive and severe as the situation demands, but always based on fairness of behaviour.
The paradigm of a ‘‘lean organization’’ includes the concept of a ‘‘lean hierarchical structure’’, to delegate more responsibilities and cultivate a more competent approach to solving problems in the organization, avoiding the need to address them higher up in the hierarchy.
For this purpose, managers and those responsible should be ‘‘team- work’’ oriented, with constant care towards the human resources engaged in company processes and demonstrating ‘‘leadership’’ based on employee involvement and constant determination in target achievement.