Increasing Productivity Using Work Design
Work Design Analysis
The lean operations system strategy has been in operation for 3 months at Your Furniture Company. Recently, operations managers have received complaints from the company’s distribution division that customer orders for dining room tables are delayed due to a backup in the production assembly area. The assembly team consists of 30 members, with each member assembling a table from start to finish from the cut pieces provided through upstream production.
The operations management team decides to do the following:
Analyze a method to understand how the assembly job is being executed
Apply a work measurement to determine a standard for how long the assembly job should take to execute; this standard time will be used by the operations management team to determine if changes are needed to the current capacity planning for the assembly portion of the production line
For this assignment, address the following:
Introduce the reader to methods analysis and work measurement as related to operations management.
Using the given Dining Table Assembler (DTA) job design, examine how each step in the methods analysis procedure can be used to improve the efficiency of the assembly operation.
Methods analysis procedure includes the following steps (Stevenson, 2020):
Identify the operation to be studied, and gather all pertinent facts about tools, equipment, materials, and so on.
For existing jobs, discuss the job with the operator and supervisor to get their input.
Study and document the present method of a current job using process charts. For new jobs, develop charts based on information about the activities involved.
Analyze the job.
Propose new methods.
Install the new methods.
Follow up the implementation to assure that improvements have been achieved.
Based on the steps that a DTA executes to assemble a dining table:
Formulate a stopwatch time study strategy for the DTA job that the operations management team can use to establish a standard time for the DTA to complete the tasks.
Update the operations management team and chief executive officer (CEO) regarding whether the assembly time to completion goal is being met.
If the assembly goals are not being met, make efficiency improvement recommendations to management.
DTA job overview: Put together the cut pieces of the table following assembly instructions. These include critical wood parts using nails or glue, constructing frames, and checking for defects—see the full list of tasks below.
Assembly tasks (DIY network, 2021)
Build uprights
Connect long supports and legs
Attach casters, secure the medium-density fiberboard (MDF)
Join the 2 x 8’s
Attach the top to the MDF
Check for defects
NOTE: Top and base are sanded and stained upstream of the assembly; therefore, assembly does not require a wait time for the stain to dry.
Assess the effectiveness of the stopwatch time strategy by calculating total average observed time for the process, normal time, and standard time given the following information:
The operations managers observed each of the 30 DTAs execute the following process steps and captured the observed times to execute each step in the process. The resulting average observed time for each process step is as follows:
Build uprights = 30 minutes
Connect long supports and legs = 5 minutes
Attach casters = 2 minutes
Secure MDF = 4 minutes
Join 2 x 8’s = 2 minutes
Attach top to MDF = 1 minute
Check for defects = 1 minute
Performance rating (PR) = 0.77
Allowance factor (AF) for the entire job time, not each step = 15%
Analyze to determine if the DTA job is meeting the company has given standard time goal of 35 minutes to complete assembling a table.
If the DTA job is not meeting the goal, make recommendations for steps the operations management team can take to improve the performance of the DTA job to the operations management team and CEO.
The conclusion should summarize key points from the research methods and sampling analysis discussed above.
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