New Work Methods Performance

Sometimes I get questions about the performance of the new work methods resulting from the application of the MDC.

These questions are as follows: How to monitor the performance of a new work method designed with MDC and manage the approach of the cycle time variations of the new method?

Answer: This question is very important to implement new designed methods at shop floor level and to understand the effectiveness of work measurement.

The MDC design process does not require standard time for designing work contents, it is normally recommended to do direct time study and/or estimating based on experiences. The time values are not engineered based on standard, those are simply just time values. Such time values cannot say inconvenience or unreliable time values, are keeping consistency as designed methods based on present methods.

At implementing new design methods, foreman just should concentrate to verify whether workers are following new method exactly or not. Meeting time values of new methods are not important at the implementing new methods stage, workers repeat new methods and time values are automatically met to designed based time values. The new designed methods never demand to shorten time values, this is important for not misunderstanding the method change.

The left of the figure indicates the actual cycle time valiance for a designed new method, beginning at implementing new methods instruction for workers that should be instructed to concentrate on new methods with no questions about time value. After several days of practice of new methods, setting time value for new methods will be cleared without special instruction about time values through foremen, because time values themselves are just time values before MDC. The figure shows that the time value variation is about ± 30 percent on before design methods.

The middle of the figure shows reducing variation of time values become narrow about ± 10 percent through reasonable foreman’s instruction and supervising for new designed methods.

The right of the figure shows that time values are longer than engineered time values for example set by MTM standard, such as 53 percent of performance level measured by high task standard. This level should be said very low compare to MTM standard. Those results means effectiveness of implementing work measurement system/performance control system and its effectiveness for productivity improvement. The figure shows that cycle time is improved from about 7.5 minutes to 4.5 minutes with work measurement/performance control system.

The total improvement of methods change and performance improvement is 8.3 to 4.5 minutes.

How do you establish and achieve a total improvement in changing current work methods and how do you improve performance?

1. Manufacturing Cost Policy Deployment(MCPD) and Methods Design Concept(MDC), The Path to Competitiveness,  Alin Posteuca and Shigeyasu Sakamoto, CRC Press, USA, 2017.

2. Beyond World-Class Productivity, Industrial Engineering Practice and Theory, Shigeyasu Sakamoto, Springer, UK, 2010.

3. Design concept for methods engineering in Maynard Industrial Engineering Handbook, the Fourth ed. Hodson, Shigeyasu Sakamoto, McGraw Hill, 1992.