Work Study and Ergonomics

Introduction

A significant proportion of the Indian population is still struggling for its basic needs: food, shelter, clothes, security and health services. A nation can only raise the level of satisfaction with respect to these basic needs only if the return from resources is maximized or the productivity is improved. Then, the economy will grow and help provide a better quality of life. Productivity at an enterprise is assessed in terms of output of a production variable per unit of input. Fundamentally, it is used to measure the output of resources such as manpower, machinery, materials and money, in producing goods and services or commodities to produce income or profitability. There are ample examples of Japanese manufacturers increasing their productivity, after the Second World War when they faced the dilemma of vast shortage of material and human resources. The problem of Japanese manufacturers was entirely different from their Western counterparts. Later, in the mid-1940s, it was recognized by the president of Toyota Motor Company that American companies were outperforming them by a factor of ten. Therefore, in order to make a move towards rapid movement, Japanese leaders, such as Toyota, Shingo and Ohno devised a new process-oriented approach that is known as the ‘Toyota Production System or Lean Manufacturing’. The main objective of this approach is to reduce wastes, which in Japanese terms is called ‘Muda’ and maximizing the activities that add value to the good or services in the customer's perspective. The term value can be attributed to anything in a product or service for which the customer is willing and ready to pay. The value addition in goods and services will increase the overall profitability of system, company or whole supply chain. According to the lean philosophy, at an organizational level or throughout the supply chain there are three types of activities:

The first type of activities that constitutes majority (about 60 per cent) of all the activities, includes internal handling of material at the shop floor or packing and unpacking of semi-finished components and materials. The second category of activities is necessary but does not add value to the goods and services. These contribute about 35 per cent of the total supply chain activities; therefore labelled necessary, non-value adding activities.