Increase availability of bottleneck resources, for example, by adding an additional shift - increases process capacity.
Minimize non-value adding activities - decreases cost, reduces lead time. Non-value adding activities include transport, rework, waiting, testing and inspecting, and support activities.
Redesign the product for better manufacturability - can improve several or all process performance measures.
Flexibility can be improved by outsourcing certain activities. Flexibility also can be enhanced by postponement, which shifts customizing activities to the end of the process.
In some cases, dramatic improvements can be made at minimal cost when the bottleneck activity is severely limiting the process capacity. On the other hand, in well-optimized processes, significant investment may be required to achieve a marginal operational improvement. Because of the large investment, the operational gain may not generate a sufficient rate of return. A cost-benefit analysis should be performed to determine if a process change is worth the investment. Ultimately, net present value will determine whether a process ‘improvement’ really is an improvement.
developed to drive productivity improvement in manufacturing plants, motion and time study is also now used in service industries. Motion and time study is associated with the so-called scientific management movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s in the United States, primarily with the work of industrial engineers Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915), Frank B.
Gilbreth (1868– 1924), and Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972). Some time studies had been conducted before Taylor, particularly by French engineer Jean Rodolphe Perronet (1708–1794) and English economist Charles Babbage (1791–1871), both analyzing pin manufacturing. However, modern motion and time study was developed as part of the scientific management movement championed by Taylor and eventually became known as Taylorism .
The foundation of Taylorism is a system of task management in which responsibilities are clearly divided between managers and workers. Managers and engineers engage in planning and task optimization, primarily through motion and time study, while workers are responsible for carrying out discrete tasks as directed. The Gilbreths sought to find the best method to perform an operation and reduce fatigue by studying body motions, attempting to eliminate unnecessary ones and simplify necessary ones to discover the optimal sequence of motions. The Gilbreths developed the technique of micromotion study, in which motions are filmed and then watched in slow motion.
Taylor incorporated early research from the Gilbreths in his ‘The Principles of Scientific Management’ (1911), and subsequent industrial engineers further developed the Taylorist system.
Taylorism played a key role in the continuous productivity improvement generated by the Fordist model of work organization. The Fordist model, which is based on the supply-driven, mass production of standardized goods using semiskilled workers, achieved efficiency improvements via scale economies and detailed division of labor, both accomplished through the Taylorist separation of conception from execution, in which managers plan tasks that workers execute. Taylor argued that such a division of labor between management and workers was a form of ‘harmonious cooperation’
that ultimately removed antagonisms from the workplace and benefited both managers and workers.
However, this process of separating conception from execution is often understood as a form of de- skilling, and Taylorism has been rejected by unions, who have denounced it as a form of speedup that harms workers and hence quality and productivity.
Debates about the effect of motion and time study on workers continue today in discussions of post-Fordism, particularly lean production, which employs motion and time study to set standards and achieve continuous improvement in work processes, but in a context of demand-driven production without large buffers of in process inventory. Some workers and commentators argue that motion and time study under lean production is simply a form of work intensification that is detrimental to workers, while others argue that under lean production workers are able to contribute to problem solving and standard setting and thus prefer motion and time study under lean production to that under Fordism.
Underlying each system is a theory of worker motivation - that workers need to be coerced (in the Fordist model) or that workers want to do their best and are interested in more intellectual activity (in the post-Fordist model). In reality, there is more likely a distribution of different motivations across workers, and worker well-being is likely to depend more on the interaction between individual orientations toward work and how a given set of methods such as motion and time study are applied in a particular work context. Because it’s the method that determines the time needed for any activity, the whole emphasis has changed over the years. The 21st century equivalent of the time and motion study is more literally a method and time study. This is a more far-reaching philosophy and approach to managing a business. When everyone is focused on better and leaner processes the
methods improve, time is reduced and more value is added. This - with continuous improvement - means activities become more streamlined and Lean. Lean means that anything wasteful is shown the bin (movement, time, materials, space). When improvements and Lean initiatives are identified and implemented, workers can often benefit from less stressful working conditions, less fatigue - potentially better rewards, maybe in the form of different hours, increased pay and job satisfaction. It can be a win-win situation.
Time and Motion Study Basics In summary, it goes like this –
Look closely at what you’re doing.
Spot opportunities to be more efficient.
Make a change to the way you work to do it.
See if it produces the expected results.
Rinse and repeat.
Small changes, big benefits - Small savings quickly mount up. At the same time, we spend a lot of time in our lives doing stuff that is not very useful.
Pay attention - Pay attention to what you do and how you do it.
Start by thinking, in broad terms, about how you spend your time over the course of a typical working week.
Rescue Time, which tracks the applications and websites you use, may give you more objective data about how you spend your time. Simply writing things down may be enough.
Spot opportunities for improvement - You already have data about the amount of time spent from your observations.
Make a positive change.
Evaluate results.
Productivity is often linked with ‘time and motion’. The evidence of time and motion studies was used to put pressure on workers to perform faster. Not surprisingly these studies had a bad press as far as workers were concerned. Productivity is about the effective and efficient use of all resources.
To manage the resources of a business it is essential that you –
understand exactly what needs to be done to meet customer demand;
establish a plan that clearly identifies the work to be carried out;
define and implement the methodologies that need to be used to complete all activities and tasks efficiently;
establish how long it will actually take to complete each activity and task;
determine what resources you need to meet the plan;
provide the necessary resources and initiate the plan;
constantly monitor what is actually happening against the plan; and
identify variances and take the relevant actions to correct them or modify the plan.