- 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
- Subdivision of manual work into small groups of simple, repetitive tasks:
- 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