Chapter 7

You should be able to:
LO 7.1 Explain the importance of work design

LO 7.2 Compare and contrast the two basic approaches to job design
LO 7.3 Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of specialization
LO 7.4 Describe behavioral approaches to job design
Work Design and LO 7.5 Discuss the impact of working conditions on job design
Measurement LO 7.6 Compare the advantages and disadvantages of time-based and output-
based pay systems
LO 7.7 Explain the purpose of methods analysis and describe how methods
studies are performed
LO 7.8 Describe four commonly used techniques for motion study
LO 7.9 Define a standard time
LO 7.10 Describe and compare time study methods and perform calculations
LO 7.11 Describe work sampling and perform calculations
LO 7.12 Compare stopwatch time study and work sampling
Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior 7-1 Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. Hill Education.
7-2
 Job design  Efficiency School

 The act of specifying the contents and methods of jobs
 Emphasizes a systematic, logical approach to job design
 What will be done in a job
 Who will do the job  A refinement of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s scientific
 How the job will be done management concepts
 Where the job will be done
 Importance  Behavioral School
 Organizations are dependent on human efforts to accomplish their  Emphasizes satisfaction of needs and wants of
goals
 Many job design topics are relevant to continuous and productivity
employees
improvement
 Objectives Specialization is a primary issue of disagreement
 Productivity between the efficiency and behavioral approaches
 Safety
 Quality of work life
Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw- Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-
LO 7.1 Hill Education. LO 7.2 Hill Education.
7-3 7-4
 Specialization  Job Enlargement

 Work that concentrates on some aspect of a product or  Giving a worker a larger portion of the total task by
service horizontal loading
Advantages  Job Rotation
For management: For employees:
1. Simplifies training 1. Low education and skill requirements
 Workers periodically exchange jobs
2. High productivity 2. Minimum responsibility
3. Low wage costs 3. Little mental effort needed  Job Enrichment
Disadvantages  Increasing responsibility for planning and coordination
For management:
1. Difficult to motivate quality
For employees:
1. Monotonous work
tasks, by vertical loading
2. Worker dissatisfaction, possibly 2. Limited opportunities for
resulting in absenteeism, high advancement
turnover, disruptive tactics, poor 3. Little control over work
attention to quality 4. Little opportunity for self-fulfillment
Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-
LO 7.3 Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-
Hill Education.
LO 7.4 Hill Education.
7-5 7-6
 Motivation is a key factor in many aspects of work life  Teams take a variety of forms:
 Influences quality and productivity  Short-term team
 Contributes to the work environment  Formed to collaborate on a topic or solve a problem
 Trust is an important factor that affects motivation  Long-term teams
 Self-directed teams
 Groups empowered to make certain changes in their work
processes
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 Benefits of teams Expert Robert Bacal has a list of requirements for

 Higher quality successful team building:
 Higher productivity
 Greater worker satisfaction 1. Clearly stated and commonly held vision and goals.
2. Talent and skills required to meet goals.
 Team problems
3. Clear understanding of team members’ roles and functions.
 Some managers feel threatened 4. Efficient and shared understanding of procedures & norms.
 Conflicts between team members 5. Effective and skilled interpersonal relations.
6. A system of reinforcement and celebration.
7. Clear understanding of the team’s relationship to the
greater organization.
Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw- 7-10
7-9
Scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of  Quality of work life affects not only workers’ overall
human interaction with the elements of a system. An sense of well-being and contentment, but also their
ergonomically designed system or part productivity
 Important aspects of quality of work life:
• Increases productivity
 How a worker gets along with co-workers
• Reduces worker’s discomfort and fatigue
 Quality of management
• Reduces to injuries to the back, neck, arms, etc.
 Working conditions
 Compensation
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7-12
 It is important for organizations to develop suitable  Time-based system
compensation plans for their employees  Compensation based on time an employee has worked
 Compensation approaches during the pay period
 Time-based systems  Output-based (incentive) system
 Output-based systems  Compensation based on amount of output an employee
 Incentive systems produced during the pay period
 Knowledge-based systems
 Management compensation
Hill Education. Hill Education.
7-13 7-14
Management Worker  Individual incentive plans

TIME-BASED  Straight piecework
Advantages • Stable labor costs • Stable pay
• Easy to administer • Less pressure to produce  Worker’s pay is a direct linear function of his or her output
• Simple to compute pay than under output system  Minimum wage legislation has reduced their popularity
• Stable output
• No incentive for workers to • Extra efforts not rewarded
 Base rate + bonus
Disadvantages
increase output  Worker is guaranteed a base rate, tied to an output standard,
OUTPUT-BASED that serves as a minimum
Advantages • Lower cost per unit • Pay related to efforts
• Greater output • Opportunity to earn more  A bonus is paid for output above the standard
Disadvantages • Wage computation more • Pay fluctuates  Group incentive plans
difficult • Workers may be penalized
• Need to measure output because of factors beyond  Tend to stress sharing of productivity gains with employees
• Quality may suffer their control (e.g., machine
• Difficult to incorporate wage breakdown)
increases
• Increased problems with
scheduling
LO 7.6 Hill Education. Hill Education.
7-15 7-16
 Knowledge-based pay  Many organizations used to reward managers based on

 A pay system used by organizations to reward workers who undergo output
training that increases their skills
 New emphasis is being placed on other factors of
 Three dimensions:
performance
 Horizontal skills
 Customer service
 Reflect the variety of tasks the worker is capable of performing
 Quality
 Vertical skills
 Reflect the managerial skills the worker is capable of  Executive pay is increasingly being tied to the success of
 Depth skills the company or division for which the executive is
 Reflect quality and productivity results responsible
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 Methods Analysis  The need for methods analysis can arise from a variety
 Analyzing how a job gets done of sources
 It begins with an analysis of the overall operation 1. Changes in tools and equipment
 It then moves from general to specific details of the job 2. Changes in product design or introduction of new
concentrating on products
 Workplace arrangement
 Movement of workers and/or materials
3. Changes in materials and procedures
4. Government regulations or contractual agreements
5. Accidents or quality problems
7-19 7-20
1. Identify the operation to be studied, and gather relevant data  Consider jobs that:
2. Discuss the job with the operator and supervisor to get their 1. Have a high labor content
input 2. Are done frequently
3. Study and document the present methods 3. Are unsafe, tiring, unpleasant, and/or noisy
4. Analyze the job 4. Are designated as problems
5. Propose new methods  Quality problems
6. Install the new methods  Processing bottlenecks
7. Follow up implementation to assure improvements have been  etc.
achieved
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 Flow process chart  Worker machine chart

 Chart used to examine the overall sequence of an operation by  Chart used to determine portions of a work cycle during which an
focusing on movements of the operator or flow of materials operator and equipment are busy or idle
LO 7.7 Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw- LO 7.7 Hill Education.
Hill Education. 7-23 7-24
 Motion study  In developing work methods that are motion efficient,
 Systematic study of the human motions used to perform an the analyst attempts to
operation
 Eliminate unnecessary motions
 Motion Study Techniques
 Combine activities
 Motion study principles – guidelines for designing motion-
 Reduce fatigue
efficient work procedures
 Improve the arrangement of the workplace
 Analysis of therbligs – basic elemental motions into which a job
can be broken down  Improve the design of tools and equipment
 Micromotion study – use of motion pictures and slow motion to
study motions that otherwise would be too rapid to analyze
 Charts – activity or process charts, simo charts (simultaneous
motions)
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 Work measurement is concerned with how long it  Standard time

should take to complete a job.  The amount of time it should take a qualified worker to complete a
specified task, working at a sustainable rate, using given methods,
 It is not concerned with either job content or how the tools and equipment, raw material inputs, and workplace
job is to be completed since these are considered a arrangement.
given when considering work measurement.  Commonly used work measurement techniques
 Stopwatch time study
 Historical times
 Predetermined data
 Work sampling
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 Stopwatch Time Study  Used to develop a time standard based on observations of

 Used to develop a time standard based on observations of one one worker taken over a number of cycles.
worker taken over a number of cycles.
 Basic steps in a time study:
 Standard Elemental Times 1. Define the task to be studied and inform the worker who will be
 Derived from a firm’s own historical time study data. studied
 Predetermined time standards 2. Determine the number of cycles to observe
 Involve the use of published data on standard elemental times. 3. Time the job, and rate the worker’s performance
4. Compute the standard time
 Work sampling
 A technique for estimating the proportion of time that a worker or
machine spends on various activities and idle time.
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 The number of observations to collect is a function of
 Variability of the observed times
 The desired level of accuracy OT =
x i
 Desired level of confidence for the estimated job time n
æ zs ö æ zs ö
2 2
n =ç ÷ or n = ç ÷ where
è ax ø èeø
where OT = Observed time
x
z = # of normal stddev. needed for desired confidence
s = Sample standard deviation i = Sum of recorded times
a = Desired accuracy percentage
n = Number of observatio ns
e = Maximum acceptable error
x = Sample mean Copyright © 2021 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-
Hill Education.
7-31 7-32
NT = OT  PR NT =  x j  PR j ( )
where
where NT = Normal time
NT = Normal time x j = Average time for element j
PR = Performance rating PR j = Performance rating for element j
Assumes that a single performance rating has been made Assumes that performance ratings are made on an element-
for the entire job by-element basis
7-33 7-34
ST = NT  AF  Standard Elemental Times are derived from a

where firm’s own historical time study data.
ST = Standard time  Over time, a file of accumulated elemental times that
AF = Allowance factor are common to many jobs will be collected.
and  In time, these standard elemental times can be retrieved
AFjob = 1 + A A = Allowance percentage based on job time from the file, eliminating the need to go through a new
time study to acquire them.
1
AFday = A = Allowance percentage based on workday
1− A
7-35 7-36
 Predetermined time standards involve the use of  Work sampling is a technique for estimating the
published data on standard elemental times. proportion of time that a worker or machine spends
 Developed in the 1940s by the Methods Engineering Council. on various activities and the idle time.
 The MTM (methods-time-measurement) tables are based on  Work sampling does not require timing an activity or involve
extensive research of basic elemental motions and times. continuous observation of the activity
 To use this approach, the analyst must divide the job into its basic  Uses:
elements (reach, move, turn, etc.) measure the distances involved, 1. Ratio-delay studies which concern the percentage of a worker’s
and rate the difficulty of the element, and then refer to the time that involves unavoidable delays or the proportion of time
appropriate table of data to obtain the time for that element a machine is idle.
2. Analysis of non-repetitive jobs.
Hill Education.
7-37 7-38
pˆ (1 − pˆ ) Advantages of Work Sampling

e=z
n 1. Observations are spread out over a period of time, making results less susceptible to short-term
fluctuations
z = Number of standard deviations needed to achieve desired confidence 2. There is little or no disruption of work
pˆ = Sample proportion (the number of occurrences divided by the sample size 3.
4.
Workers are less resentful
Studies are less costly and less time-consuming, and the skill requirements of the analyst are
n = Sample size much less
5. Studies can be interrupted without affecting the results
6. No timing device is required
2
7. It is well suited for nonrepetitive tasks
z
n =   pˆ (1 − pˆ ) Disadvantages of Work Sampling
e 1. There is much less detail on the elements of a job
e = maximum error percent 2. Workers may alter their work patterns when they spot the observer, thereby invalidating the
results
3. In many cases, there is no record of the method used by the worker
4. Observers may fail to adhere to a random schedule of observations
5. It is not well suited for short, repetitive tasks
6. Much time may be required to move from one workplace to another and back to satisfy the
randomness requirement
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 Success factors:  It is important to make design of work systems a key

 Carried out by personnel with appropriate training and element of strategy:
background  People are still at the heart of the business
 Consistent with the goals of the organization  Workers can be valuable sources of insight and creativity
 In written form  It can be beneficial to focus on quality of work life and

instilling pride and respect among workers
 Understood and agreed to by both management and
 Companies are reaping gains through worker
employees
empowerment
7-41 7-42

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Chapter 7

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Copyright:

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You should be able to:

LO 7.1 Explain the importance of work design

 Job design  Efficiency School

 Specialization  Job Enlargement

 Benefits of teams Expert Robert Bacal has a list of requirements for

Management Worker  Individual incentive plans

 Knowledge-based pay  Many organizations used to reward managers based on

 Flow process chart  Worker machine chart

 Work measurement is concerned with how long it  Standard time

 Stopwatch Time Study  Used to develop a time standard based on observations of

ST = NT  AF  Standard Elemental Times are derived from a

pˆ (1 − pˆ ) Advantages of Work Sampling

 Success factors:  It is important to make design of work systems a key

 In written form  It can be beneficial to focus on quality of work life and

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