| Time and Motion | Thursday, 9th August 1984 |
| Neville studied assembly plants and manufacturing alongside various production managers. One of the most knowledgeable put a very pointed slant on human psychology in the workplace - in effect saying predictability is about the same as horse racing. Well here is an example I came across that supports his approach to management. I worked with an assembly engineer lets call him 'Peter' for sake of argument and Peter could make a PSU ready for test in around 2hrs. He had a card that said it should take 2.5hrs to make and the company employed T&M engineers to prove it. The company introduced piece-work on the basis it incentivised staff to make more and so get paid more. What do you think I found? What incentive did Peter see? Do the figures stack up? Is this good practice today? Here are my observations: 1. The PSU took the same time to make by me after a few had been made 2. Quality falls off sharply if you try to go quicker 3. Peter was paid the same each week (no matter what he was making) 4. T&M Engineers were higher paid 5. The PSU could not be improved through any change without a full T&M study being done again. 6. The overriding incentive was for Peter to do as he always did and complain to the T&M team to get a correction if his pay was less at the end of the week. 7. Peter took pride in his work no matter what he was making and that set the quality and the time it took. 8. The rogue assembly engineers were still rogues - finding ways to cheat the system of control and costing the company one way or another... 9. The problems were overcome using technology and employing less staff - thus the assumption to this day that new technology replaces and reduces head count and saves money. Doing the sums it is not true. In most cases poor management leads to overspending, poor motivation, sick-leave, low productivity and poor quality. The lack of good management at higher levels makes it inevitable jobs will be lost and people replaced by expensive technology. |
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| < Back to Biography | Posted by Neville Clark, 23/08/2010 |
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