Design of Work System: Behavioral Approach Followed Efficiency Approach and Has

DESIGN OF WORK SYSTEM
The importance of work system design is underscored by any organization’s

dependence on human efforts to accomplish goals. WORK DESIGN is one of the oldest aspects
of operations management. It involves job design, work measurement, and the establishment of
time standards, and worker motivation and compensation..
OPERATION STRATEGY
It is important for management to make design of work systems a key element of its
operations strategy. Despite the major advances in computers and operations technology,
people are still the heart of a business. Technology is important, but technology alone is not
enough.
JOB DESIGN
This involves specifying the content and methods of job. The objectives of job design
include productivity, safety, and quality of life.
 Ergonomics
 An important part of job design
 The incorporation of human factors in the design of the workplace
 Relates to design of equipment, design of work methods, and overall
design of the work environment
 Seeks to prevent common workplace injuries by taking into account the
fact that human vary in their physical dimensions and capabilities.
Current practice in job design contains elements of two basic schools of thought:
a. Efficiency school – systematic, logical approach to job design.

- The efficiency approach, a refinement of Frederick Winslow
Taylor’s scientific management, received considerable emphasis
on the past.
b. Behavioral School – emphasis satisfaction of wants and needs
- Behavioral approach followed efficiency approach and has
continued to make inroads into many aspects of job design.
It is noteworthy that specialization is a primary issue of disagreement between the

efficiency and behavioural approaches.
Specialization – describes jobs that have a very narrow scope

e.g. range from assembly lines to medical specialties
BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES TO JOB DESIGN
In an effort to make jobs more interesting, job designers frequently consider job
enlargement, job rotation, job enrichment, and increased used of mechanization.
 Job enlargement
 means giving a worker a larger portion of the total task. This constitutes
horizontal loading – the additional work is on the same level of skill and
responsibility as the original design.
 GOAL: to make the job more interesting by increasing the variety of skills
required and by providing the worker with a more recognizable
contribution to the overall output.
 Job rotation
 means having workers periodically exchange jobs
 firm can use this approach to avoid having one or few employees stuck in
monotonous job
 allows workers to broaden their learning experience and enables them to
fill in for others in the event of sickness or absenteeism.
 Job enrichment
 Involves an increase in the level of responsibility for planning and
coordination tasks
 Referred to as vertical loading
 Focuses on the motivating potential of worker satisfaction
Importance of the approaches to job design is that they have the potential to increase
the motivational power of jobs by increasing satisfaction throuhn improvement in the quality of
life.
Motivation
 A key factor in many aspects of work life

 Not only can it influence quality and productivity, it also contributes to the work
environment.
TEAMS
The effort of business organizations to become more productive, effective, competitive,
and customer – oriented have caused them to rethink how work is accomplish. Significant
changes in the structure of some work environments have been increasingly use of teams and
the way workers are paid, particularly in lean production systems.
Generally, the benefits of teams include higher quality, higher productivity, and greater
worker satisfaction.
Common Teams in Organizations
 Functional or Departmental Teams

 Groups of people from same work area or department who meet on
regular basis to analyse customer needs, solve problems, provide
members with support, promote continuous improvement, and share
information
 Probably the most familiar team in the workplace
 The members work together to accomplish a goal
 Self – managing Team
 Sometimes referred as self – directed teams
 Design to achieve a higher level of teamwork and employee involvement
 Members work together to reach a goal without a great deal of oversight.
WORKING CONDITIONS
 Are important aspect of job design

 Working conditions have significant impact on worker performance in terms of
productivity, quality of outputs, and accidents.
Working conditions include:
 Temperature and Humidity

 Ventilation
 Illumination
 Noise and Vibrations
 Work breaks
 Safety
WORK MEASUREMENT
 Concerned with the determination of the amount of time required to perform a unit of
work
 It is very important for promoting of an organization
 It enables management to compare alternative methods and also to do initial staffing
Standard Time
 The amount of time than an employee should consume or to complete task, working
at a sustainable rate, using given methods, tools and equipment raw materials
inputs, and workplace arrangement.
Stopwatch Time Study
 Introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the late 19th century

 The most widely used method of work measurement today
 Used to develop time standard based on observations of one worker taken over a
number of cycles
 The basic steps in the time study are the following:
a) Define the task to be studies, and inform the worker who will be studied
b) Determine the number of cycles to service
Standard Elemental Times
 Derived from a firm’s own historical time study data

 Over the years, a time study department can accumulate a file of elemental times that
are common to many jobs. After a while, many elemental times can be simply
retrieved from the file, eliminating the need for analysts to go through a complete time
study to obtain them
 The procedure in using this consists the following steps:
a) Analyse the job to identify the standard elements
b) Check the file for elements that have historical times, and record them. Use
time study to obtain others, if necessary
c) Modify the file times if necessary
d) Sum the elemental times to obtain the normal time, and factor in allowances to
obtain the standard time.
Predetermined Time Standard (PTS)
 establishes Basic time, to which is added allowances for Rest and Relaxation,
Machine Delay and Contingency, thereby providing “Standard Time” for any given
process
 the major advantage of PTs is that they enable user to predetermine standard time
(and therefore cost) for a given manufacturing process – even before production has
begun – and they offer speed, accuracy, and consistency in establishing such data
Work Sampling
 a technique for estimating the proportion of time that a worker or machine spends
on various activities and the idle time
 does not require timing an activity, nor does it even involve continuous
observation of the activity. Instead, an observer makes brief observations of a
worker or machine at random intervals and simply notes the nature of the activity.
COMPENSATION
 a significant issue for the design of work systems

 if wages are too low, organizations may find it difficult to attract and hold competent
workers and managers
 if wages are too high, the increased costs may result in lower profits, or may force the
organization to increase its prices, which might adversely affect demand for
organization’s product or service.
Two Basic System for Compensating
1. Time – Based Systems

 known as hourly and measured daywork system
 compensate employees for the time the employee has worked during a pay
period
2. Output – Based System
 Also known as incentive based system
 Compensate employees according to the amount of output they produce during a
pay period, thereby tying oay directly to performance.
 Individual Incentive Plans

 Takes a variety of forms
 Straight Piecework – is the simplest plan wherein a worker’s pay
is direct linear function of his/her output
 Group Incentive Plans
 Stress sharing of productivity gains with employees
 Some focus exclusively on output, while others reward employees for
output and the reductions in material and other costs
 Team Approach – form of group incentive plan
- used by companies for problem solving and
continuous improvement
- emphasis on team, not individual performance
 Knowledge – Based Pay Systems
 Portion of worker’s pay that is based on the knowledge and skill that the
worker possesses
 It has three dimensions:
 Horizontal Skills – reflect the variety of tasks the worker is
capable of performing
 Vertical Skills – reflect managerial tasks the worker is capable of
 Depth Skills – reflect quality and productivity results
 Management Compensation
 With the new emphasis of customer service and quality, reward systems
are being restructured to reflect new dimensions of performance. In
addition, executive pay in many companies is being more closely tied to
the success of the company or division that executive is responsible for.

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DESIGN OF WORK SYSTEM

The importance of work system design is underscored by any organization’s

a. Efficiency school – systematic, logical approach to job design.

It is noteworthy that specialization is a primary issue of disagreement between the

Specialization – describes jobs that have a very narrow scope

BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES TO JOB DESIGN

 A key factor in many aspects of work life

Common Teams in Organizations

 Functional or Departmental Teams

 Are important aspect of job design

Working conditions include:

 Temperature and Humidity

Stopwatch Time Study

 Introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the late 19th century

Standard Elemental Times

 Derived from a firm’s own historical time study data

Predetermined Time Standard (PTS)

 a significant issue for the design of work systems

Two Basic System for Compensating

1. Time – Based Systems

 Individual Incentive Plans

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