Are Time Studies Really Important?

We asked our Product Manager, John Hatcher to elaborate on the subject of Time Studies, since he mentioned it in his last response we published on “When to switch to automatic printing” (see entry below dated July 31, 2009).  This is a subject near and dear to his heart, as Time Studies are one of his favorite analytical tools.  So why are Time Studies so important?  What can they accomplish?  Should small production facilities conduct one or only large ones?  How does a production facility conduct Time Studies?   “I believe that Time Studies are so important because that is the best way for a company to evaluate and analyze costs and productivity.  Time Studies should highlight where a facility needs to improve in order to cut costs, and improve efficiencies.  For example, time studies can be conducted to improve employee or manufacturing productivity, but in order to do so, the various activities or processes involved need to first be accurately identified and tracked.   Many production or manufacturing facilities are very resistant to change and believe that what and how they are doing things is the best way.  Many also think that doing time studies takes too much time away from actual production.  What these people or facilities don’t realize is that they may actually be wasting a lot of time doing redundant activities, duplicating functions, covering up production inefficiencies or – worst of all – not costing their products correctly.      I recommend Time Studies for small as well as large facilities since both can benefit from detailed analysis of their processes.  I mean, why would a facility not want to improve processes, job functions, identify barriers to productivity, or identify and eliminate redundancy?  The results can greatly improve the productivity as well as improve the bottom line for the company.   There are many ways to approach a time study.  First, it’s important to really look at the procedures that go into making your product from the order coming in the door until it goes out to the customer.   Break this process down into the individual steps and measure how much time each step optimally takes.  Then measure the combined steps of the process and so on.  Time studies will help to identify bottlenecks, those processes or steps where everything seems to come to a complete stop.   Bottlenecks are where time and money are lost and if you can identify and correct those bottlenecks, you will increase productivity and get your product out the door faster with no added expense.  In fact, as you eliminate bottlenecks your costs will go down and your profits should go up.  This is a win, win situation and that is why it is important to do.  This is only a simplified version of how a time study is conducted.  There are more detailed explanations that people can look up on the web.”