Workload, not too low or too high but just right

Practical ideas to control workload, for business or manufacturing or medical facility or government entity or office or shop or lab or warehouse.

Workloads will change as an organization's activity varies, that's a fact.
Workloads apply to individual people, crews, equipment, and processes.

Workloads should be high enough that the business gets its money's worth, yet low enough that bodies and minds are not stressed, low enough that equipment and facilities can be maintained.

Common Workload Concerns

• Resolve a disagreement about workloads.


• Balance workloads within a crew.


• Change manning as volume varies.


• Relieve a high workload for a constraining operation.


• Recognize when workload is not the most important variable. (When output is critical, for example.)


• Create acceptable day-to-day operating workloads.

Please read below, for details about these challenges.



So Just How Can We Create Acceptable Workloads?

To quantify workload, someone will have to pull out a watch, and objectively observe the people, processes, equipment.

The results are then a basis to relate labor and equipment activity to your units of output.

Then, use the results, schedules and cycle times to resolve constraints; balance the loads among people and crews; suggest improvements in staffing; workload distribution and activity assignment; timing; working hours; sequence; changeover or setup; cross training.


Jackson Productivity is good at getting the waste out, at measuring and then modifying workload. I can assure you that, as with most improvement, experience helps especially in complex and rapid reaction circumstances.

When your organization needs professional assistance with your workload situation, or just to discuss options, please call

Jack Greene at 843-422-1298. There's no cost or obligation.



or, e-mail us

 

Your Expectations

You can expect to resolve workload issues such as the following, after routine measurement, analysis, and actions to control workload.

• Resolve a disagreement about workloads. A difference of opinion will not always involve unions. A headquarters asked JPR into a plant to observe and quantify workloads, because they differed. Other clients call when they prepare for union negotiations, or have a job overload grievance. Time study allows us to quantify workload objectively, and usually suggests promising options to alleviate any problem.



• Balance workloads within a crew. The first step is to find out how long the tasks take, then move around the elements of activity, from a heavy overload, either persons or machines, to the least loaded. A masonry client learned from JPR time study results how to spread the workload and minimize lost time.
  
  A power company used time study to determine crew and supervisory workload, assignments, and scheduling for annual maintenance on major power generation equipment. The same techniques resolve office workloads equally as well, as they add to the low workload while reducing a high workload.



• Change manning as volume varies. Rare is the business with level demand and no variation. When time study data are available, a manning calculation is mere arithmetic but without it an answer is guesswork.



• Relieve a high workload for a constraining operation. A basic and effective way to raise capacity is to identify constraints and address them in turn. JPR has shown clients where equipment, crewing, or management practice restricted output with all sorts of negative results. Once the constraints were known, they were more easily managed.



• Recognize when workload is not the most important variable. Is the crew size set for optimum workload or for maximum output? What do you want loaded, the operator or the constraint? Almost always it’s the constraint. A JPR client had one operator for four automatic machines, to keep the operator workload up. However, if more than one of the machines jammed at once, the operator, busy with one, couldn’t un-jam the others so they sat idle. An entire product line was slowed because the machines, with a normal percentage of jams, starved the entire manufacturing line, kept output down and product on backorder. Of course, the real answer may be to reduce the number of jams but sometimes that doesn’t happen.
  
  A similar situation occurs if work performed by a few people, whose pay may be at the low end of the scale, interferes with output of many who are better paid. A hospital’s cash flow is delayed if operating rooms are not cleaned promptly for reuse, so a wise hospital will make sure that a crew is always available even if they have a low workload.



• Create acceptable day-to-day operating workloads. Work expectations should be even enough that people and unions don't complain of work overload or imbalance, at least not with cause. A client has JPR in periodically to measure crew workload, as sales and equipment changes occur, just to have the answer when the question arises.


When your organization needs professional assistance with your workload situation, or just to discuss options, please call

Jack Greene at 843-422-1298. There's no cost or obligation.



or, e-mail us