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 firm’s 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

worker’s 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