Article 15. What is a Time-Study Analyst and How Does He Do His Job?
You can find information on the definition and application of time-study in an Industrial Engineering textbook. Most textbooks however demonstrate the use a stopwatch, which you can ignore since it is only used for highly repetitive manufacturing jobs. For our purposes all a time-study analyst needs is a wristwatch, a clipboard and least one year of experience time-studying in an office environment. A manufacturing time-study analyst times the physical movements of a production worker as he does a repetitive manufacturing job. An office time-study analyst’s job is much more complicated he must allow for thought processes that go into doing the work especially if the person is doing original work. One might argue that this is an impossible task but office analysts have been doing this type of work mostly in insurance companies for the last forty years.
Lets take for example the articles on this website that you are currently reading. All of the articles are original and I write one once or twice a week. Each article I write is completed on the first day. On the second day I rewrite the article run the spell check and publish it on the web. Although each article is original I follow the same process with each one I write.
Now lets examine the difference between an estimate and a time-study. On the first day of writing I estimated that I spend about three hours writing and on the second day I estimated about one hour to rewrite, spell check and publish. I have estimated four hours total for each article. If I were time-studying I would time at least three of the articles. If the articles had varied significantly in length I would have timed five. I would probably have rated myself at 80% due to my slower typing skills and I would have thrown out the three times I went to the kitchen to get coffee. I would have also noted the number of pages produced for each article down to the quarter page. Then I would convert the time for each article to 100% (because of my typing skills being rated at 80%, I would subtract 20% of the time) and divide by the number of pages produced to arrive at a standard time per page. Comparing the time-study with the estimate you find 193 minuets standard time with 240 minuets (5 hours) for the estimate. A better typist who doesn’t drink as much coffee should easily be able to write the articles in the standard time. As a reminder it is important that you plan all work at the 100% standard time and that you staff the jobs at 75% (by adding 25% more time to the standard).
The primary skill needed by the time-study analyst is in knowing how to rate the person being timed which can only come from on the job experience. I have found that skilled time-study analysts will come up almost the same time when tested. I have personally timed processes for three days previously timed by others and came within one minuet of their time.
The main things that the time-study analyst has to watch out for is the introduction of unnecessary operations whether they are intentionally introduced or not they must be removed because a person working at a rating of 100% does not do anything unnecessary. Overtime the analyst will become familiar with what is a normal pace (100%) which is sometimes described as person walking three mph.
