Why might practicing managers and industrial engineers be skeptical about job enrichment and sociotechnical approaches to job design?
Is there an inconsistency when a company requires precise time standards and encourages job enlargement?
You have timed your friend, Lefty, assembling widgets. His time averaged 12 minutes for the two cycles you timed. He was working very hard, and you believe that none of the nine other operators doing the same job can beat his time. Are you ready to put forth this time as the standard for making an order of 5,000 widgets? If not, what else should you do?
Comment on the following:
"Work measurement is old hat. We have automated our office, and now we run every bill through our computer (after our 25 clerks have typed the data into our computer database)."
"It's best that our workers don't know that they are being time studied. That way, they can't complain about us getting in the way when we set time standards."
"Once we get everybody on an incentive plan, then we will start our work measurement program."
"Rhythm is fine for dancing, but it has no place on the shop floor."
Your company's new process improvement guru is aggressive at providing and requiring online self-service at all levels of management, from making travel arrangements to doing check requests, travel expense reports, and even performance evaluations online. What advice would you give to the guru about this?
