Measure Work Elements Down to a Level of Desired Complexity Fewer questions will lead to more stable and consistent feedback and greater participation. What is the number of phone calls or inquiries from others?Дecide what information to gather related to the actual work, such as sources of work numbers of defects in the incoming work workflow during varying times of the day, week or month incomplete or inaccurate work and so on.How long is the wait time or hold time while data is pulled up or the computer is refreshed?.How often do employees ask supervisors or peers questions?.Some work-related questions practitioners may want answered are: It is not definitive, but it will be interesting to compare estimates and assumptions about where the time goes to the actual measurement.Д¬onsider whether to record everything that goes on during the day, including breaks, meetings, project work and lunch, or just the work itself. Ask associates: What kinds of things constitute 80 percent of work on a given day? Seek examples, write them down and estimate the average time an employee spends processing each item. In planning the time study, think through the kinds of work the job entails.

Understand and Articulate the Different Types of Work to Measure Handpicked Content: Process, Product and People: 3P Approach to Quality 2. These standards are important because without them, overall performance cannot be evaluated fairly. Practitioner: We hope to use them, in part, to set standards to measure performance against. Remember, we are interested in how long transactions take, not how fast you are.Д®mployee: What are you going to do with the results? Practitioner: Our time study procedures allow for you to take breaks, ask questions, attend meetings and so forth. A time study measures how long things take, not how fast you do them.Д®mployee: What if I have distractions during the day and I canвЂ™t work at my best level? The following exchanges may help practitioners prepare for some basic questions:Д®mployee: Is there some concern that we are not doing our work? Without a strong rationale for doing the time study, it will be hard to answer employee concerns. This is important for setting goals and for communicating to employees. Know Why the Study Is Being ConductedДЄrticulate the reasons for doing a time study in writing before beginning.

Follow eight simple steps in thinking through a time study to avoid potential potholes. Plan Ahead to Save CostsД«ecause time studies are costly in terms of both lost work time and the harnessing of employee trust and engagement, care must be taken in planning them. Over time, or by measuring the work of several people, it is possible to come to a general understanding of how long the work takes, which is good enough to get started. The result: Time measurements are not precise, but estimates of how long a task takes. There are many opportunities for variation in conducting a task. In addition, people have different work styles вЂ“ some are fast and diligent others take their time. While engaged in these input, process, output (IPO) chains, other things may intrude: mulling things over, asking a question, taking a phone call, going to lunch and so on. These processes have names, such as maintenance or transfers, and begin with inputs, move on to processes in which inputs are modified, and conclude with outputs. Work is not strictly a set of disconnected tasks, it is a process. When practitioners conduct a time study, it is essential that they know what they want to study. Without basic time study measures, it is impossible to know whether work has improved or whether there are differences in performance in a unit. Today, time and motion studies are entirely focused on the time aspect of work, or how long it takes to do a job, and are critical in getting fundamental information on how a process is working.ДЄ time study can establish a baseline from which to drive improvement efforts, or set a standard to control performance. Over the years, time and motion studies have been done in many industries both to ascertain how long it takes to do a given job and to improve it through setting production goals and reducing unnecessary steps in a process.

When first introduced in the 19th and early 20th centuries, time and motion studies established rules of motion that guaranteed optimal performance during a given time period and reduced the number of movements needed to get work accomplished.

Tmu time study