Time Study Question

[PennStateIE]

I am doing a time study on a kitting process where carboard displays are being formed, packed with product, and then the display is being packed into a carton and taped.

My question for everyone is on the display forming process. I have done a time study (around 30 samples). I have a 95% Confidence Interval established and I feel the standard for that element is good. I use the standard 15% PF&D. I have complaints that the standard is too high because no one likes to create the displays for a whole shift. Complaints are about paper cuts, boredom, etc.

Any thoughts/suggestions to combat some of the compalints? I'm not sure how to combat the paper cuts (other than making the associates wear gloves).

Thanks.

 

[PSE]

There are some protective finger wrap tapes that are available from various safety equipment suppliers that could be tried. They do not reduce dexterity quite as much as gloves but you might still get complaints on comfort.

Not too much you can do to bring excitement into an otherwise mundane task other than rotate people through it on a periodic basis. This might impact you a bit on "setup" for an employee changeover. You could try to minimze that by having changeovers coincide with normal break periods. Boredom can sometimes lead to poor quality or "goofing off" so you may end up actually gaining in efficiency.

Any chance of automating the process?

Regards,

 

[PennStateIE]

Thanks...that's what I thought. No real chance of automating this process at this point. We need to get aline setup real quick and running only for a short period of time.

What other finger protection is there besides gloves?

 

[PennStateIE]

Also curious...If you were doing a time study and got similar results, how would you set the production standard? Would you "rate it down" due to the possibility of boredom or papercuts? Would you expect 90-95% efficiency?

 

[PSE]

Here is a location for finger wrap tape. I am sure there are others out there as well.

http://www.labsafety.com/store/product_group.asp?dept_id=648&cat_prefix=5WA

In my experience, I have never seen 90-95% efficiency achieved. This has been due to the complexity of the various products I have worked with. We set our production standards based upon the average of several time studies using various assembly personnel. Some people are simply better at some types of tasks than others but people rotate through jobs and you have to have some allowance for it.

Regards

 

[PennStateIE]

Thanks! So for planning purposes, would you plan for x pieces per hour or x*.95 pieces per hour?

 

[PSE]

x*.95 would give you the more realistic model or in a more generic sense,

Throughput = standard time x utilization %

Regards