Integral analysis of labor productivity for multi-variant small-series production

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Hermann Lödding
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 269070743

Labor productivity is an important target variable within operations management. With the integral analysis of labor productivity (IHP), developed in the basic research project, companies now have a structured and evaluated process to assess and analyse labor productivity in detail. Furthermore, this process associates worker states with suitable improvement methods, which enables a systematic productivity management.However putting these findings into practice is still difficult for the following reasons:- Companies with a high mix, low volume production cannot use this method yet, since the number of needed multipliers and therefore the effort increases significantly.- For a complete productivity management cycle, both the measurement of the effort of the improvement methods and an integrated approach to assess the benefits of the methods are missing.- Time measurements are often not feasible in industrial companies due to the rejections by the employee union representation.- The effort for data acquisition and evaluation for a continuous use is high due to the lack of software support.As a result the following main goals arise for the research project:- To extend the area of application of the IHP to high mix, low volume production- To improve the selection of improvement methods through an integrated method assessment- To raise the level of acceptance for the IHP through substitution of time measurements- To lower the effort of the IHP with the use of prototypical software applications for mobile data acquisitionThe research project will be conducted in cooperation with Dräger Medical GmbH and is structured into six work packages: Initially the modelling of the paid worker time has to be extended for high mix, low volume production (WP1) and the data gathering has to be supplemented with further data acquisition methods (WP2). In the next step, a systematic productivity management should be established (WP3), which will be evaluated with the industrial partner (WP4). Through software prototypes (WP5) and guidelines (WP6) the effort of this method shall be reduced, so that industrial companies can profit from the findings of the research project and the extension of the transfer project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants (Transfer Project)
• Application Partner: Dräger Medical Deutschland GmbH
• Co-Investigator: Dr.-Ing. Axel Friedewald