hello and welcome to my newest beginning
engineers video today I'm going to be
talking about time and motion studies
which is how you set the expected
operation times and manufacturing or the
service industry it's also important
that we talk about avoiding annoying
those being timed time and motion
studies are one of the fundamental tools
and job tasks of industrial engineers
they're often just called time studies
in the industry briefly looking back on
their history they were pioneered by
Frederick Winslow Taylor he's one of the
fathers of Industrial Engineering he's
known for scientific management which is
all about increasing efficiencies and
output using measurements he did the
time study part of a time in motion
study then you have Frank and Lillian
Gilbreth a married couple they really
focused on breaking down the motions
that people do into very small distinct
parts they call these distinct standard
motions
thurb legs which is pretty much their
last name backwards and then they switch
two of the letters which is pretty neat
so if you discover something
groundbreaking or really help the
industry out maybe you can name
something after yourself so I guess the
question here is can you really
standardize the motion time it takes to
do a task yes actually you can
surprisingly well I've done hundreds of
time studies and they generally hold up
once you time a few people and get a
feel for how long it takes to do it that
should hold with the rest of the
population now of course there are
variances we call these personal fatigue
and delay factors and you can use that
factor to adjust the times as I
mentioned before with the gilbreth's
and their third legs any complicated
task can be broken down into a smaller
simpler set of movements called third
legs there's an image on the slide that
has an example of some of them here is a
real-life example of how we could break
down an operation into simpler parts
let's say putting shoes
on first you would search for your shoes
then you would find them you would reach
for them you would grasp them so they're
in your hands you would transport your
shoes to your feet as funny as it sounds
you would then assemble shoes to feet
so that means you put the shoe on your
feet you would then search for the laces
find the laces reach for them grasp them
and assemble them now you might say if a
shoes on your foot do you really have to
search for the laces yes you do
it takes a split second but you do spend
some time looking for them now in all
practicality that searching for the
laces time is probably negligible but
there's going to be some operations
where the searching does take a decent
amount of time so in the end it's up to
you and your best judgment what really
adds time to the operation all right so
how do you actually do this for a living
or even if you only need to do it a few
times at work how do you actually do it
well first of all you have to make sure
you have a clear physical set point that
triggers each and every element an
element is just typically what we call a
step in the industry so your operation
is made up of many steps it's made up of
many elements so for example I was
working on a time study at a place that
made coils copper coils that went into
solenoids eventually the first element
started by grabbing a string and
wrapping that string around an arbor a
mechanical piece grabbing the string is
not debatable as soon as someone's hand
touches the string that's when you would
start timing it was very obvious after
the string was tied they had to grab
copper so the trigger for that element
was grab copper and then the actual step
was wrapped the copper around the Arbor
if you originally went into this
observing the operator and said step one
wrap the string and copper around the
arbor you wouldn't know exactly when the
start timing when they're pulling on the
string when they're pull
on the copper when it touched the
mechanical thing they were wrapping it
around you don't want to leave any room
for debate so a lot of times grab or
touches our perfect trigger points
because it's something that everyone can
agree on as soon as you see something
touch something else start your timer as
you follow through with all your
elements your last step needs the lead
back into the trigger point of your
first step in this case it did touch the
coil to the table and grab the string
and if you look back up at element one
it was triggered by grabbing the string
if this is not the case then you don't
have the full cycle you're probably
missing something so double-check your
observations also be careful that the
operators the people your timing may be
if you're in the service industry it's
you know call help assistance be careful
that they aren't deliberately going slow
this does take some experience though if
you're new at the place you're working
at or haven't done a lot of time studies
you might not be able to tell they're
going slow or not so maybe ask a
supervisor or just come back at multiple
times
hopefully they wouldn't fake it every
single time you are around and hopefully
the culture of where you work doesn't
really encourage that but we'll talk
more about that later all right so once
you've done some observations and you've
written down the trigger points and the
element steps for each step in the cycle
and your end step goes back to your
beginning trigger point you can begin to
make your observations and what's nice
about a trigger point is as soon as you
see that exact instant in time you start
your stopwatch and then you take a time
you move on to the next element you take
that time you move on to the next one
and with many jobs the repetitive so
eventually you get back to the beginning
you start again so you get a second
column of information then a third then
a fourth and you keep doing this till at
least five or six observations but if
you're new to this I'd recommend doing
closer to ten then you sum up all your
time in each row so for each element all
your observations you add up the time
and then you divide by the number of
observations so you get an average and
this is the best way to do it because
multiple measurements the more you take
the more you'll kind of zoom in on that
actual element time a more accurate
element time and that's just the law of
large numbers you do something over and
over again you get a better
representation of what the actual number
is and once you get a time for each
element you can decide how long it will
take the do the entire cycle and then
from here you can say okay this many
seconds per cycle or this many minutes
you'll get this many parts per hour so
you finally have some useful metrics for
production the last point I'll say is
that industrial engineers typically use
decimal minute watches for time studies
that's just because most decimal minute
watches go out to the third decimal and
minutes as opposed to seconds that's
just a lot easier for calculations and
it's a lot more accurate of a time
here's some other useful notes believe
it or not you might have wondered okay
if I'm taking all these times hasn't
someone done this before possibly yes
someone at your own company might have
so check the C of that information
exists but if not there's actually even
general standards that are in place one
is called methods time measurement for
example there's many different standards
a lot of companies have their own you
know a reach should take this long for
every foot or and assembling this type
of screw to this type of hole should
take this long there's a lot of that out
there as we mentioned earlier about
people faking or being nervous with
their times if you're around the number
one thing I would like to stress above
all else make sure you really speak to
the people you are time studying before
you just begin there are people to build
rapport ask questions approach them and
say hi I'm going to be doing a time
study for this reason it will never be
used to punish you is that okay I've had
people thank me and tell me I was one of
the first ones to actually approach them
and ask them and beyond being polite
it's just more effective that way too
you're going to get a lot more
cooperative people or less prone to fake
and as you begin these conversations if
they're more comfortable with you
they're going to tell you problems
they're having or other
areas you should investigate so it will
lead to additional things to study and
collect information on as I mentioned
before how everyone takes a little bit a
different time compared to one another
even with very easy tasks people very
some people are speed demons some people
are a little slower so personal fatigue
and delay factors aren't are anywhere
between five and fifteen percent you
know so you get a time and you could say
okay you know our company's a more
laid-back culture let's give them an
extra 10 percent amount of time you know
just in case I need that bathroom break
or they're feeling a little tired that
day that's a pretty standard practice
but likewise too if your timing someone
that's really quick all the time
you can add way more time or if you
think someone's going slow on purpose
dial down the time a little bit all
right thank you so much for watching
this video I hope you subscribe to my
channel and above all else I hope you
really learned the value of time studies
and how to perform them it's really
interesting once you begin collecting
the data because you can really begin to
predict how long production should take
and you can even apply a lot of these
numbers to different operations as long
as they're similar enough