In the design chapter we identified three broad criteria that could be used to choose between options. These were,
• The feasibility of the option – can we do it?
• The acceptability of the option – do we want to do it?
• The vulnerability of the option – are we prepared to take the risks?
These criteria are arguably a useful starting point.
Feasibility – the key issue here is that SVT undertook, not a minor technological investment, but one that would totally reshape their organization. The question therefore is whether the company had enough resources (both human and financial) to cope with such a big investment.
Not only is it necessary to ask the simple question, 'Can we afford such an investment?', it is also necessary to ensure that there are sufficient managers and project engineers to implement all the changes. At the same time it would be necessary to assess the willingness of all parts of the organization (in this case from all over Sweden) to share the same objectives.
Acceptability – the main benefits for such technology appear to derive from its flexibility and transparency. Unlike analogue systems, digital files can be shared relatively easily so that different parts of the organization (say regional newsrooms and the main news studio) can work together on the same news story with no transmission delay between the different parts of the organization contributing to the story. This level of transparency also makes it easier for the accuracy and quality of news programmes to be assessed by those most capable of doing so.
Similarly, digital technology such as this is sufficiently flexible to allow editing to be done fast and efficiently. In terms of the normal five performance objectives (quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost) it is the flexibility inherent in the technology that is enhancing the other performance objectives.
Vulnerability – with any new technology there is a risk that it will not work as expected. Here SVT was taking a considerable risk. The technology itself is changing radically, some of the technology is being developed outside the organization, the news organizational structure is also changing, and if that were not enough, they are moving to a new location. Changing so many things at once usually means increased risks that something will go wrong and affect other decisions. Nor is the environment always benign. These changes must take place in a news environment that could prove to be extremely testing. The September 11 incident, only one day after the launch of the new technology, put the new technology through a rigorous assessment almost immediately.
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C H A P T E R 9
Job design and work organization Teaching guide
Introduction
This is a vital part of any course in operations management. If anything, our textbook (like most in the area) devotes too little time to the human aspects of operations management. This is not because we do not think it to be important. On the contrary, we understand that it is at the heart of any practical treatment of operations management. However, most colleges and universities do not exhibit the degree of multi-skilling and flexibility, which is described in the chapter itself. Often there are colleagues in the Organizational Behaviour or Human Resource Management areas who devote whole courses to this sort of subject. Often a typical operations management course is left to deal largely with the more technical and methodological aspects of organizations. However, notwithstanding the fact that these issues may be treated elsewhere in any programme, we are firmly of the view that no operations management course is complete without some treatment of job design and work organization. We have chosen to treat the various approaches to job design more or less chronologically. Not everyone agrees with this approach. We find it works well for us, but there is no reason why everyone should follow the same sequence. What we believe to be more important is the idea that there are many distinct but overlapping approaches to job design. None of them is better than the others as such. They all bring something to the task.
Key teaching objectives
• To stress the importance of the human contribution to producing and delivering products and services.
• To identify the differences between different approaches to job design.
• To give students some experience of some of the difficulties in adopting each individual approach to job design.
• To demonstrate how the same job can be designed in very different ways.
Exercises/discussion points
• Exercise – Get some simple stopwatches (electronic stopwatches are now relatively cheap – it is worth investing in some!) and allow students to time jobs. For example, get someone in front of the class to do a simple task (dealing a deck of cards into four piles, opening and packing a box or emptying sweets out of a tube and putting them back again ). Get the other students to time several repetitions of these tasks and demonstrate how much variation there
is in the time taken to perform the task at each repetition. Also prompt a discussion on how the exact specification for the job would need to be decided before any time estimate is fixed. Discuss the boundary between defining a job (to ensure quality standards, safety, etc.) and allowing operators to adopt their own improvement ideas (to promote continuous improvement or motivation, etc.).
• Exercise – Send students to some part of the college where they can observe people working (eating place, bar or library). Facilitate a discussion on the jobs they observed.
What skills were needed? Was the job divided up between individuals? Could it be done on a team basis? How could individuals be motivated to do the job better? How much room for autonomy is there in the job? What aspects of job flexibility are likely to be important? And so on.
• Teaching tip – One session, which always proves popular on our courses, is to get a team of around four people at the front of the class to perform a repetitive job. We use polystyrene drinks cups with plastic lids, drinking straws and papier-mâché drinks trays. For example, one person could put four cups on the tray, pass the sub-assembly along to the next person who puts the lids on, this is then passed on to the third person who takes the straws out of their paper wrappers and inserts four straws into the cups, passes it on to the fourth person who carries the individual tray to the other side of the room and returns and so on. While this is going on, get the remaining students in groups to time how long each
‘product’ is taking to be produced. Also give them the task of devising work standards, a suitable payment system and suggesting any improvements. After the job has been performed for three or four minutes, stop the ‘workers’ at the front (but keep them at the front, separate from the rest of the class) and allow the syndicates to devise standards, payments systems and improved work methods. Keep the ‘workers’ sitting at the front while this is happening. After 10 or 15 minutes, lead a discussion on how the job could be improved. If necessary some of these improvements could be incorporated into the job and the whole process repeated. It is our experience that in nine out of ten times when this simulation is performed no one in the class asks the ‘workers’ who have been doing the job what they think. After a while point this out to the rest of the class.
Exercise – The use of ‘tabletop experiments’ as Gilbreth called them can be particularly effective when teaching process analysis. One of the simplest is described as follows.
Step 1 – Divide the students into pairs (or small groups depending on the class size). Make sure that one of them has a watch with a second hand on it (alternatively, buy some cheap stopwatches and give them out one to a group). Give the class some previously cut or torn up pieces of paper. Tell the class that you are going to give them 20 letters and that one of the group must repeatedly write it on the small bits of paper.
Then write the following letters up on the board.
O P E R A T I O N S M A N A G E M E N T
Ask the students to time the person who is repeating the task on the different bits of paper. At this point it may be as well to establish the fact that you will be walking round and rejecting any
‘products’ that do not meet quality standards. Get the students to plot the learning curve as they
Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers & Robert Johnston, Operations Management, fifth edition, Instructor’s Manual
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improve over time and debate with them the reasons why ‘performance’ (that is, the time they take for each product) varies.
Step 2 – Tell the class that you are a consultant who has been hired by this company and have managed half the total workload for this task. Tell them that for the next round they only have to write 10 letters instead of 20. These letters are as follows:
O E A I N M N G M N
You can point out that these letters are the words ‘operations’ and ‘management’ with every other letter missed out. Ask the groups to repeat the exercise. It is important at this stage that you tell them that the person writing the letters can neither copy from any template, nor should be able to see the products once they are completed (otherwise they can copy). Again, get them to plot their times. Generally, the times for doing these tasks will be higher than for the ‘larger’
task. Discuss with them why this should be. Debate issues of task complexity and routine as determinants of the actual amount of ‘work’ in any task.
Step 3 – One can repeat this exercise again but this time writing operations management backwards as below.
S N O I T A R E P O T N E M E G A N A M
You will find that some people are better than others at doing this. This can lead to debates about natural ability and skill levels. Also a useful discussion can be promoted on how we cope with individuals of varying abilities within a single process.
Teaching tip – We have found that the issue of series and parallel process configurations (or long-thin versus short-fat processes as we also call them in the text) is something that students respond well to. The Weldon Hand Tool case is excellent at demonstrating this, especially if one is willing to invest in two or three of the products that can be taken apart. However, other simpler (and cheaper) products such as electrical plugs could also be used to demonstrate the same issue.
Case study teaching notes South West Cross Bank
The case describes a rapid and profound change from branch-based back-room operations to centralized processing. The impact on work design both at the branches, and at the processing centres, is outlined.
The changes described are representative of those that are being implemented (to a varying extent and pace) in most large western retail banks. The urgency of these changes has been driven both by pressures to reduce operating costs and by the availability of new, fast and reliable processing technologies.
The case allows students to explore the extent to which empowerment is applicable to mass services. It also provides a description of a process, which can be transferred to a process flow chart, allowing assessment of value-added and non value-added activities.
Some notes on the South West Cross Bank case