9 Primary Approaches to

Operations Analysis
Niebel, Benjamin & Andris, Frevalds (c 2009). Niebels Methods,
Standards and Work Design, 12th Edition, USA : McGraw Hill.
Operations Analysis
Represent a systematic approach to analyzing the facts presented on the
operation and flow process charts.
These principles are just as applicable to the planning of new work as to
the improvement of work already in production.
Goal is to simplify operation by eliminating, combining and rearranging the
process steps.
While decreased waste, increased output, and improved quality, consistent
with lean manufacturing principles, are the primary outcomes of operation
analysis, it also provides benefits to all workers with better working
conditions and methods.
Thought-provoking questions, when intelligently used, help factory
supervisors to develop constructive ideas and assist in operations analysis.
Lean manufacturing
Originated with the Toyota Motor Corporation as a means of eliminating
waste in the aftermath of the 1973 oil embargo and followed the footsteps
of the Taylor system of scientific management but in much broader
approach, targeting not only manufacturing costs, but also sales,
administrative, and capital costs.
Highlights of the Toyota Production System (TPS) included seven types of
muda or waste (Shingo, 1987):
Transportation
Inventory
Motion
Waiting
Overprocessing
Overproduction
Defects
5S (Housekeeping)
A corollary to the seven mudas is the 5S system to reduce waste and
optimize productivity by maintaining an orderly workplace and
consistent methods.
Seiri or Sort
Seiso or Set in order
Seiton or Shine
Seiketsu or Standardize
Shitsuke or Sustain
1. OPERATION PURPOSE
The most important of the nine points of operation analysis
The best way to simplify an operation is to devise some way to get the
same or better results at no additional cost.
An analysts cardinal rule is to try to eliminate or combine an
operation before trying to improve it.
2. PART DESIGN
To improve the design, analysts should keep in mind the following pointers
for lower-cost designs on each component and each subassembly:
1. Reduce the number of parts by simplifying the design.
2. Reduce the number of operations and the length of travel in
manufacturing by joining the parts better and by making the machining
and assembly easier.
3. Utilize a better material.
4. Liberalize tolerances and rely on key operations for accuracy, rather than
on series of closely held limits.
5. Design for manufacturability and assembly.
3. TOLERANCES AND SPECIFICATIONS
The third of the nine points of operation analysis concerns tolerances and
specifications that relate to the quality of the product, that is, its ability to satisfy
given needs.
While tolerances and specifications are always considered when reviewing the
design, this is usually not sufficient; they should be considered independently of
the other approaches to operation analysis.
Designers may have a tendency to incorporate specifications that are more rigid
than necessary when developing a product. This can be due to a lack of
knowledge about cost and the thought that it is necessary to specify closer
tolerances and specifications than are actually needed to have the manufacturing
departments produce to the actual required tolerance range.
Methods analysts should be well versed in the details of cost and should be fully
aware of what unnecessarily close tolerances and/or rejects can do to the selling
price.
4. MATERIAL
Methods analysts should consider the following possibilities for the direct
and indirect materials utilized in a process:
1. Finding a less expensive and lighter material.
2. Finding materials that are easier to process.
3. Using materials more economically.
4. Using salvage materials.
5. Using supplies and tools more economically.
6. Standardizing materials.
7. Finding the best vendor from the standpoint of price and vendor stocking.
Standardizing Materials
The typical economies resulting from reductions in the sizes and grades of
the materials employed include the following:
1. Purchase orders are used for larger amounts, which are almost always
less expensive per unit.
2. Inventories are smaller, since less material must be maintained as a
reserve.
3. Fewer entries need to be made in storage records.
4. Fewer invoices need to be paid.
5. Fewer spaces are needed to house materials in the storeroom.
6. Sampling inspection reduces the total number of parts inspected.
7. Fewer price quotations and purchase orders are needed.
5. MANUFACTURE SEQUENCE AND PROCESS
The methods engineer must understand that the time utilized by the manufacturing
process is divided into three steps:

Inventory Planning and Control

Manufacturing
Process Set-up Operations

In-process manufacturing
Considerations in Improving the
Manufacturing Process
(1) rearranging the operations;
(2) mechanizing manual operations;
(3) utilizing more efficient facilities on mechanical operations;
(4) operating mechanical facilities more efficiently;
(5) manufacturing near the net shape; and
(6) using robots
6. SETUP AND TOOLS
The amount of tooling up that proves most advantageous depends on:
(1) the production quantity,
(2) repeat business,
(3) labor,
(4) Delivery requirements, and
(5) required capital.
Set-up time reduction
1. Work that can be done while the equipment is running should be done at that
time. For example, presetting tools for numerical control (NC) equipment can
be done while the machine is running.
2. Use the most efficient clamping. Usually, quick-acting clamps that employ cam
action, levers, wedges, and so on are much faster, provide adequate force, and
are usually a good alternative to threaded fasteners. When threaded fasteners
must be used (for clamping force), C washers or slotted holes can be used so
that nuts and bolts do not have to be removed from the machine and can be
reused, reducing the setup time on the next job.
3. Eliminate machine base adjustment. Redesigning part fixtures and using preset
tooling may eliminate the need for spacers or guide-block adjustments to the
table position.
4. Use templates or block gages to make quick adjustments to machine stops.
7. MATERIAL HANDLING
Material handling includes motion, time, place, quantity, and space constraints.
First, material handling must ensure that parts, raw materials, in-process
materials, finished products, and supplies are moved periodically from location to
location.
Second, since each operation requires materials and supplies at a particular time,
material handling ensures that no production process or customer is hampered
by either the early or late arrival of materials.
Third, material handling must ensure that materials are delivered to the correct
place.
Fourth, material handling must ensure that materials are delivered at each
location without damage and in the proper quantity.
Finally, material handling must consider storage space, both temporary and
dormant.
Reducing the time spent in handling material
1) reduce the time spent in picking up material;
2) use mechanized or automated equipment;
3) make better use of existing handling facilities;
4) handle material with greater care; and
5) consider the application of bar coding for inventory and related
applications.
Five reasons justify the use of bar coding for
inventory and related applications:
1. Accuracy. Typically representative performance is less than 1 error in 3.4
million characters. This compares favorably with the 2 to 5 percent error
that is characteristic of keyboard data entry.
2. Performance. A bar code scanner enters data three to four times faster
than typical keyboard entry.
3. Acceptance. Most employees enjoy using the scanning wand. Inevitably,
they prefer using a wand to keyboard entry.
4. Low cost. Since bar codes are printed on packages and containers, the
cost of adding this identification is extremely low.
5. Portability. An operator can carry a bar code scanner into any area of the
plant to determine such things as inventories and order status, etc.
10 principles of material handling
1. Planning principle. All material handling should be the result of a deliberate
plan in which the needs, performance objectives, and functional specifications
of the proposed methods are completely defined at the outset.
2. Standardization principle. Material handling methods, equipment, controls,
and software should be standardized within the limits of achieving overall
performance objectives and without sacrificing needed flexibility, modularity,
and throughput.
3. Work principle. Material handling work should be minimized without sacrificing
productivity or the level of service required of the operation.
4. Ergonomic principle. Human capabilities and limitations must be recognized
and respected in the design of material handling tasks and equipment, to
ensure safe and effective operations.
5. Unit load principle. Unit loads shall be appropriately sized and configured in a
way that achieves the material flow and inventory objectives at each stage in
the supply chain.
10 principles of material handling cont
6. Space utilization principle. Effective and efficient use must be made of all available
space.
7. System principle. Material movement and storage activities should be fully integrated
to form a coordinated, operational system that spans receiving, inspection, storage,
production, assembly, packaging, unitizing, order selection, shipping, transportation,
and returns handling.
8. Automation principle. Material handling operations should be mechanized and/or
automated where feasible, to improve operational efficiency, increase responsiveness,
improve consistency and predictability, decrease operating costs, and eliminate
repetitive or potentially unsafe manual labor.
9. Environmental principle. Environmental impacts and energy consumption are criteria
to be considered when designing or selecting alternative equipment and material
handling systems.
10. Life-cycle-cost principle. A thorough economic analysis should account for the entire
life cycle of all material handling equipment and resulting systems.
8. PLANT LAYOUT
The principal objective of effective plant layout is to develop a
production system that permits the manufacture of the desired
number of products with the desired quality at the least cost.
Physical layout is an important element of an entire production
system that embraces operation cards, inventory control, material
handling, scheduling, routing, and dispatching. All these elements
must be carefully integrated to fulfill the stated objective. Poor plant
layouts result in major costs.
The indirect labor expense of long moves, backtracking, delays, and
work stoppages due to bottlenecks in the transportation muda are
characteristic of a plant with an antiquated and costly layout.
Layout Types
Product or straight-line layouts - the machinery is located such that
the flow from one operation to the next is minimized for any product
class.
Advantage: popular for certain mass-production manufacture, because
material handling costs are lower than for process grouping.
Disadvantages: employee dissatisfaction due to broad variety of occupations
present, larger initial investment, layout can be disorderly and chaotic
Process or functional layouts - grouping of similar facilities.
Advantage: neat and orderly and promote good housekeeping, easy operator
training, technical specialization
Disadvantage: long moves and backtracking, large volume of paperwork
required to issue orders and control production between sections
Muthers Systematic Layout Planning
The goal of SLP is to locate two areas with high frequency and logical
relationships close to one another using a straightforward six-step
procedure:
1. Chart relationship
2. Establish space requirement
3. Activity relationship diagram
4. Layout space relationship
5. Evaluate alternative arrangements
6. Select layout and install
Travel Chart
Relationship chart
SLP
9. WORK DESIGN
Topics considered in work design:
manual work and the principles of motion economy
ergonomic principles of workplace and tool design
working and environmental conditions
cognitive work with respect to informational input from displays,
information processing, and interaction with computers
workplace and systems safety