You have outlined two approaches for improving efficiency in state government it appears that the Cost and Schedule approach is based on time studies and the other is not. Why would anyone want to disrupt their organization by doing time studies when your Work Improvement Teams appear to be the more positive approach?”

Answer: The two approaches recognize the differences between organizations. Where schedules have a major impact on the budget the most efficient approach is Cost and Schedule. In any organization where several departments are dependent in a series of operations and if early in the series a department fails to meet its schedule the result has a snowballing effect on all of the succeeding operations resulting in huge losses in man-hours. This is generally not recognized because in current scheduling practices the time to do operations are based on loose estimates with time added for delays due to weather or equipment break down. The Schedule ends up to be so loose that all departments are able to meet their schedules everybody wins except the budget which must be grossly inflated to cover the lost man hours. But if time-studies are done on each of the operations and a reasonable allowance is made for weather delays a more representative schedule can be implemented. Short term reporting on progress against the schedule enables corrective measures to be taken and when all else fails there is still overtime to fall back on. Equipment failure should not be included in schedules because it is the result of preventive maintenance failure and should not be hidden in the schedule. There is little choice but to do time-studies in this instance where there is so much dependency on schedules. The added benefit of being able to determine the correct staffing levels and man-hour budgets will easily cover implementation costs.

The more people oriented approach “Work Improvement Teams (WITs)” are not as dependent on schedules which affect other departments. The organization’s activities can be more efficiently done through the implementation of WITs. When WITs standardize the most efficient method for doing their jobs by developing detailed process flow charts. The organization becomes a more efficient operation through employee involvement in problem solving. An analyst’s review of the WIT’s process flow charts will determine staffing requirements and the organization’s budget. It is true that the staffing level for this method is based on the analyst’s estimate of the work being done as shown in the process flow charts but a trained analyst can easily determine if the process flow chart has been correctly done. As an aside comment, where travel is indicated on the process flow chart, mileage should be included to aid in the estimate.