Time & Motion Study — Making the most of your time
By: Content For Pragyan
Tags: Management, Info, Business Management, Industrial Automation, Time Management

Time & Motion Study — Making the most of your time

An Objective Approach

Crossing an item off from your to-do list washes a sense of accomplishment over you. But on the sight of the unfinished items and a quick glance at the clock, panic crawls its way in. Another day of mad rush impends, to get the piling work done on time and to no satisfaction. You admonish yourself for the inefficiency, thinking that you should have planned and thought this through. And what you thought isn’t far from the truth of what you ideally should have done. How? That’s where Scientific Management and Time & Motion Study come in.

As the name suggests, time & motion study a portmanteau of time-study and motion-study, both of which are scientific studies in search of optimisation of performance by understanding the time and labour required. The great Athenian thinker Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Primarily employed for repetitive tasks in industries, time-study was developed in the period between the two World Wars by Frederick W. Taylor. It dwells into procedural measurement of time taken for completion of tasks, while also accommodating human activities. Motion study developed by Frank B. Gilbreth and Lillian M. Gilbreth describes, systematically analyses and provides means for improvement of methods. Accompanied by work-simplification — cutting down on redundant and wasteful motions — the combination of the two studies helps in setting time standards along with a wage-incentive system to motivate the workers.

Time-motion study can be simmered down to a systematic investigation and analysis of the number of movements needed to get work done, and the bracket of time that each correct movement consumes. These movements can range from the motions of a secretary through the day such as taking calls, sending emails and scheduling meetings to the motions of an assembly unit of a car company such as reaching, grasping and placing parts of a car. In this way, time-motion study can be used in cafeterias, libraries, banks, department stores and even household work to increase operational efficiency.

The knowledge of time-motion study is used as a tool for better comprehension of scientific management. What is scientific management then? Taylor, the man behind the concept, believed that optimising the way a work is done rather than extracting the best out of the workers could prove to be more efficient. The philosophy of scientific management can be phrased as follows — scientific analysis of the methodology of work and appropriate allocation of labour or tasks. It is to be noted that this ideology was developed in a time when there was no standardisation and motivation, no incentive for more efficient labour. Taylor, who was then a mechanical engineer (understandably interested in efficiency), conducted various experiments in his workplace (the most famous being a shovel design) and studied the most optimal ways in which a work could be done. This led to the framing of the fundamentals of scientific management — Taylorism.

However, Taylorism in the coming days turned out to be a flop. Experts argued that this methodology dehumanised the workforce and converted man to machine by following a reductionist approach to attain optimisation. The implementation seemed to leave no scope for the worker to think or innovate. The counter-argument was that the modern application of this technique was not the same as what Taylor visualised. Here’s what he felt:

“The task is always so regulated that the man who is well suited to his job will thrive while working at this rate during a long term of years and grow happier and more prosperous, instead of being overworked.”

Though both Taylor and the Gilbreths jointly pioneered the concept of scientific management, there were some abstract differences in their approaches. While Taylor’s theory was more focused on achieving maximum efficiency by decreasing the total process time with not much concern for the practical limitations, the Gilbreths gave more importance to the welfare of workers. In Taylor’s theory, which is often quoted to be the “classical perspective” of scientific management, workers have lesser relevance compared to profit.

Regardless of the reception and deficiencies, implementation of scientific management was one of the first instances when process improvement and management were treated as a scientific problem. Ideas from Taylorism were invoked in what resulted in the fourth Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0, to gain perspectives for Industrial Automation. Although scientific management has evolved by leaps and bounds, one would not be wrong to assume that Taylorism laid the foundation for the large and influential practices of today’s industries.

Source: Boundless, Business Dictionary, Quizlet, IETool