The variation of cycle times with repetition for manual tasks.

Abstract

The variation of cycle time with repetition has engaged the interest of ergonomists, psychologists, statisticians and engineers. The approach most directly useful to industrial management is that which enables time standards to be set more accurately, and which provides a basis for planning and estimating. The original relationships in aircraft manufacture have been found to be very useful for planning and estimating purposes, but are not sufficiently accurate for setting time standards for incentive schemes. It is in this field of time standards that a knowledge of accurate relationships could have a tremendous impact on direct labour costs. Furthermore, it could change fundamentally the existing practices for human work measurement Laboratory experiments to investigate a possible fundamental relationship applicable to all manual operations with varying degrees of skill and cycle time were conducted, Skilled and unskilled subjects performed operations requiring varying degrees of skill and cycle time. In...