Work Measurement

Vital inputs for:

Manpower and machine planning
Reducing labour costs
Scheduling
Budgeting
Designing incentive systems

Standard Time
Amount of time a qualified worker should spend to complete a
specified task, working at sustainable rate, using given methods,
tools and equipment, raw material and workplace
Most commonly used methods of work measurement:
Time study
Historical times
Predetermined data
Work sampling
 Work Measurement
Time Study
Most widely used method of work measurement
Especially appropriate for short, repetitive tasks
Average of a few properly trained workers
performed time are taken as the standard

Basic steps:
Define the task to be studied, and inform the worker(s) who will be studied
Determine the number of cycles to be observed
Time the job and rate the performance
Compute the standard time
 Work Measurement
Standard Elemental Time (SET)
derived from a firms own historical time study data
A time study department accumulates a file of elemental times that
are common to many jobs
After a certain point, many elemental times can be retrieved from the
file
Eliminate need for analysts to go through a complete time study to
obtain those

Predetermined Time Standards (PDTS)

published data on standard elemental times

Commonly used system is Method-Time Measurement (MTM)

MTM tables are based on extensive research of basic elemental times
 Work Measurement
Work Sampling
is a technique for estimating the proportion of time that a worker
or machine spends on various activities and the idle time.

appropriate for long, non-repetitive tasks

Two primary uses:

Ratio-delay studies: concern the percentage of

workers time that involves delays

Analysis of non-repetitive jobs: percentage of

time an employee spends doing various jobs
 Work Measurement
Observed Time (OT): simply the average of the recorded times

OT
x i

n
Normal Time (NT): observed time adjusted for worker performance

NT OT * PR

Standard Time (ST): normal time required for a job plus

an allowance time for different delays

For job time AF job 1 A

ST NT * AF
1
For time worked AFday
1 A