Bev,
Sorry, I overstated it.
The paper I attached provides a more balanced perspective on the current state of T&M studies.
"‘In the 1970s and 1980s, the measurement of work was linked to pay, via individual incentive schemes,’ says Phil Scotcher, general manager of Ilfracombe, Devon-based TDK-Lambda, a manufacturer of electrical power supplies that dates back to 1959. ‘Employees were paid for meeting or exceeding a standard time or rate, and penalised for not.’
The downside, of course, was that as a result of being paid like individuals, employees acted like individuals. Again, the memories are often painful for those who were there.
‘Across UK industry, you’d see operators performing individual pieces of work, maximising their own earnings - even as they generated piles of work-in-progress, or poor quality output that wouldn’t be detected until it reached a subsequent work station some time later,’ says Scotcher. ‘And the payment system was encouraging this behaviour.’
In short, sums up Scotcher, ‘at its most stark, it was a system that gave workers license to perform a task in a way that would maximise their own earnings, rather than in a way that was best for the business’".
"So the idea was to eliminate inter-station buffers of work-in-progress, and link the pace of production to the actual level of demand with pull-scheduling systems such as kanban cards, or their electronic equivalents, governing the rate of output. In short, there was simply no logic to rewarding over-producing - and often no physical means of over-producing anyway: if components aren’t there, and don’t exist, then they cannot be worked upon.
The result was inevitable. ‘Individual incentive schemes disappeared - and with them, the individual measurement of work,’ sums up Scotcher. In short, with other means available for generating workplace productivity improvements, and no need for time and motion studies in order to drive payment systems, industrial engineering went into terminal decline.
That said, time and motion studies haven’t died out completely. TDK-Lambda itself makes periodic use of them when introducing a new product.
‘It gives us a baseline standard time for costing purposes,’ says Scotcher, who readily admits to occasionally missing the certainty that a time and motion study provided.".
Thanks for correcting me.
John
Sorry, I overstated it.
The paper I attached provides a more balanced perspective on the current state of T&M studies.
"‘In the 1970s and 1980s, the measurement of work was linked to pay, via individual incentive schemes,’ says Phil Scotcher, general manager of Ilfracombe, Devon-based TDK-Lambda, a manufacturer of electrical power supplies that dates back to 1959. ‘Employees were paid for meeting or exceeding a standard time or rate, and penalised for not.’
The downside, of course, was that as a result of being paid like individuals, employees acted like individuals. Again, the memories are often painful for those who were there.
‘Across UK industry, you’d see operators performing individual pieces of work, maximising their own earnings - even as they generated piles of work-in-progress, or poor quality output that wouldn’t be detected until it reached a subsequent work station some time later,’ says Scotcher. ‘And the payment system was encouraging this behaviour.’
In short, sums up Scotcher, ‘at its most stark, it was a system that gave workers license to perform a task in a way that would maximise their own earnings, rather than in a way that was best for the business’".
"So the idea was to eliminate inter-station buffers of work-in-progress, and link the pace of production to the actual level of demand with pull-scheduling systems such as kanban cards, or their electronic equivalents, governing the rate of output. In short, there was simply no logic to rewarding over-producing - and often no physical means of over-producing anyway: if components aren’t there, and don’t exist, then they cannot be worked upon.
The result was inevitable. ‘Individual incentive schemes disappeared - and with them, the individual measurement of work,’ sums up Scotcher. In short, with other means available for generating workplace productivity improvements, and no need for time and motion studies in order to drive payment systems, industrial engineering went into terminal decline.
That said, time and motion studies haven’t died out completely. TDK-Lambda itself makes periodic use of them when introducing a new product.
‘It gives us a baseline standard time for costing purposes,’ says Scotcher, who readily admits to occasionally missing the certainty that a time and motion study provided.".
Thanks for correcting me.
John
