WS/ OM – Work Study

OM = Organisation and Methods:

• Sometimes, specific tasks must be analysed in detail to identify how to improve them

• Work Study, a scientific management approach, can be the answer

• WS engineers determine the right way to perform a manual or clerical task, and then calculate the time it should take an experienced operative to complete it, measured in SMVs  – Standard Minute Values – which are then used to calculate ‘ideal’ manning levels and bonuses earned

• Up to the 60s, pioneering WS techniques to improve productivity included:
  • Time and method study from Frederick W Taylor in the 30’s – “The Principles of Scientific Management” – Philadelphia steel
  • Move product to workers and their gear – Charles Sorensen – Ford
  • Hawthorne experiments and impact of rest breaks – George Elton Mayo – GE
  • Motion study from Frank & Lillian Gilbreth
  • Rating assessment from Charles Bedaux

• These techniques evolved from the productivity improvement initiatives taken by US manufacturing companies such as Bethlehem Steel and Henry Ford’s car factories – both were capital and labour intensive – both focused on output volumes and labour productivity

• Much success came from:
  • Subdivision of manual work into small groups of simple, repetitive tasks:

    • Henry Ford claimed “nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs”

    • Only later was it realised that this so bored and demotivated employees that output volumes would eventually fall
  • Detailed measurement of manual work to reduce wasted time
  • Tighter control of labour numbers, grades and so costs
  • Work-measured bonus schemes paying an extra 1/3 of pay for 1/3 extra effort
  • Standardisation and interchangeability of parts
  • More efficient layouts of assembly lines

• It was not too difficult to achieve major productivity improvements at the time – many work practices were disorganised, largely because employees had been left to devise their own ways of working

• Work study thus had a good run, for at least 50 years, up until the 80s

• However, its connection with job losses always made it despised by the Unions

• And its focus on manual and clerical tasks made it disregarded by those wanting to study ‘higher’ levels of work e.g. brainwork