What is Work Study?

Work study is a means of enhancing the production efficiency or productivity

of the firm by elimination of waste and unnecessary operations. It is a
technique to identify non-value adding operations by investigation of all the
factors affecting the job.

According To BS:
'The systematic examination of activities in order to improve the effective use
of human and other resources'
What is Value Adding & Non Value
Adding?
Conditions Of Value Addition:

1. Physical Transformation.
2. Customers willingness to Pay.
3. First Time Right.
Tools Of Work Study
 Advantage Of Time Study:

 It helps to achieve the smooth production flow with minimum

interruptions.
 It helps to reduce the cost of the product by eliminating waste and
unnecessary operations.
 Better worker-management relations.
 Meets the delivery commitment.
 Helps to achieve better working conditions.
 Improves upon the existing process or methods and helps in standardization
and simplification.
 History Of Work Study :

 The development of industrial engineering and production management was greatly influenced by
Frederick W (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915). Taylor who is known for his methods to improve
industrial efficiency. FW Taylor was one of the first people to closely study the work process and the way
productivity is affected by it and that is the reason why he is considered to be ‘the father of scientific
management’.
 Before the industrial revolution many companies were controlled and managed by small families or one
person. Mass production was introduced and companies became larger and more complex, this made it
difficult for the business owners to manage because they had little expertise.
 Employees determined the work they wanted to do, how they would do it and the tools they would use,
but they put little effort in their work and only worked hard enough to make sure they did not get fired.
This resulted in poor production and efficiency as well as wastage of materials.
 FW Taylor observed that managers knew very little about what took place in workshops. The work
process was unplanned and lacked coordination.
 History Of Work Study :

 In a book called ‘Shop management’, Taylor shared his beliefs that these problems could
be corrected by improving management methods and that the best way to increase labor
productivity and reduce waste, was to optimize the manner in which work was done.
The main principles of scientific management highlighted in Taylor’s monograph ‘The
principals of scientific management’ published in 1911, include to properly divide the
workload between workers and managers, monitor worker performance and assign
workers jobs based on their attributes which would ‘secure the maximum prosperity for
the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employees’.Taylor’s main
focus was time study and as an experiment, stop watches were used to measure the time
a worker took to finish a particular task .
 Work Measurement:

Work measurement is concerned with the determination of the

amount of time required to perform a unit of work. Work
measurement is very important for promoting productivity of an
organization. It enables management to compare alternate
methods and also to do initial staffing. Work measurement
provides basis for proper planning.
 Rating:
Rating is a term used in work measurement to assess the speed and effort put
into a job of work by the worker. The British Standard Institute definition of
the verb “to rate” is:

To assess the worker’s rate of working relative to the observer’s concept of the
rate corresponding to standard rating. The observer may take into account,
separately or in combination, one or more factors necessary to the carrying
out of the task, e.g. speed of movement, effort, dexterity, consistency.
 How is it done?

Capable observers must be trained in the art of rating, first recognizing the standard rating
and then, through practicing, assessing against this standard other levels of rates of working.
Rating scales have been developed. One of the original ones is Charles Bedaux’s, known as
the “60/80 scale”. Bedaux considered that workers paid on a fixed day work system
without any financial incentive would normally do 60 minutes worth of work in an hour
whereas one on a financial bonus scheme would get the work done on average one third
faster, doing 80 minutes work in an hour (incentive rate). The rest of this “60/80 scale”
was pro-rata. So, for example, a worker working twice as fast as this perceived “normal” 60
rating would be assessed as working at 120 rating.