The NMTMAs are responsible for the correct teaching and application of the MTM systems in own country. Since the learning process requires a solid support during the first real implementations on the field, the NMTMAs, more and more are developing reliable and controlled consulting resources. Consulting activities are necessary to guide the practitioners to manage effectively MTM improvement projects, which usually require technical and managerial skills, difficult to teach in a training class.

The message being forward by the NMTMAs follows a simple idea with a large impact: the time required for a given job is largely determined by the work method. It is thanks to the MTM process that the method-time link has been demonstrated; “the method determines the success” has become a well known motto among all NMTMAs.

It is common to use the process itself as a starting point for productivity improvement. When setting the targets for productivity improvements it is essential to have facts on where there is room for improvement – and how large this is. Unfortunately, commonly this analysis is neither made sufficiently often nor sufficiently thoroughly. Target formulation is decisive in gaining the attention and commitment of management, but also of the employees who are to carry out the work.

From a process view, the main task is first to analyse the process in detail to identify the various types of loss. The losses can be time related, such as technical losses related to machines and equipment, materials or employees. In situations where machines produce and the task of the workers is to keep the machines running, it is important to differentiate between the acceptable demands for breaks and freedom from the employees on the one side, and the ambition to keep machines running continuously on the other.

Another category of losses is inefficient methods. This concerns manual labour and mechanised processes. Analysis tools, such as Methods-Time Measurement enable the method to be described and its efficiency evaluated.

Balancing losses are a third interesting category. Balancing losses often arise in controlled systems but also in relatively free systems. Losses due to scrap are also important to analyse.

A totally different dimension is lead times and time losses associated with throughput. It is important to remember that only a total of 5 to 10 percent of the total throughput time is used for added value. The rest is made up of various types of waiting, such as queuing times. There is often a lot of potential here.

Analysing variations in speed and how speed deviates from the nominal performance of the equipment is also often of great interest. The correct establishment of the reasons for these losses reflects the potentials for improvement.

Developing existing processes and investments through the improvement of methods and increased availability is extremely profitable and stimulating. It also creates a better platform for adopting new techniques securely and efficiently. An in-depth analysis of the possibilities of the present production system creates resources as well as involvement and commitment to developing what is already there. Cross-functional project teams often carry out this analysis with a mixture of individuals with practical experience from the production division in question and engineers with analytical skills.

To solve day-to-day problems that lead to disruptions and losses in production, it is very effective to involve the employees in the production process. Employees often have many ideas and suggestions as to how to eliminate the disruptions. In addition, involvement in developing and implementing the improvement process creates a disposition to change. It is vital that these actions do not only lead to "fire fighting efforts" – the quick fix.

The root cause of the problem must be found first before developing and implementing the solution. To succeed with this type of productivity process, it is important to employ systematic work methods and that management and specialists provide active support and encouragement.

This work method is often called continuous improvement. This is somewhat misleading since all types of productivity improvements must be continuous. You will never reach your final goal. Every day is a new challenge.

MTM in Productivity Improvement

The MTM consultant is a master in describing how productivity can be improved. In this context, we must break down the term productivity into three dimensions.

Method is without comparison the most dominant dimension with regard to improving productivity. Well-worked-through methods also create motivation and better utilisation, since the process becomes more secure (fewer disruptions). It is therefore important to start with method development when organizing productivity improvements.

Methods can be divided into two categories:

• hardware, such as machines, tools, layout and the like.
• software, such as motion patterns, organization, training, support, maintenance, and suchlike

There is often a deficiency of method work on the software side. The danger of limiting improvements to this area is that the lasting effects are limited. An effect is produced so long as a focus is maintained on the areas where improvements have been made. But, the lasting effects do not come automatically.

Changes to hardware often lead to lasting effects once the equipment is in place. A combination of hardware and software improvements is the key to success and lasting effects.

Performance, i.e. the motivation of the employees or the speed of the machines, is often emphasised as the means to increase productivity. Performance is important, not least since it produces a multiplier effect on the improvement of methods and utilisation. It must however never be the only measure for improving productivity. Letting employees know how important their work contributions are, combined with clear targets, generates motivation.

Important instruments when it comes to motivational actions include organizational development, with customer target driven monitoring, where employees are activated in flow-oriented teams.

The speed of machines often varies greatly. There is a lot of potential in reducing these variations and the possibility of raising the speed to that claimed by the manufacturer.

Low machine speeds are often due to technical deficiencies or disruptions. It is only once these have been eliminated that speeds can be raised in a controlled way.

Utilisation is an expression, for both machines and humans, of the proportion of planned time that is used for value-creating activities. Common losses for both humans and machines are often due to technical instability. This can be due to factors such as the state of equipment, material supply and variations in the quality of components. In intensive goods flows, balancing losses often arise, such as difficulties in distributing labour equally between all work stations in the flow. Large variations in the work content of products further complicate the matter. Balancing losses can be divided into two categories: static and dynamic.

Static balancing losses are often dealt with by a careful balancing of the capacity of different stations along the production line. Dynamic balancing losses, which are becoming all the more dominant, are considerably more difficult to handle. These are a result of variations in the work content of different products that are manufactured on the line, product variants for which it is difficult to rebalance the line, or variations in input material quality, the daily rhythm of co-works, etc. One way to deal with dynamic balancing losses is teamwork along the production line, in which employees are empowered to rebalance the line and allocate tasks and resources.

For employees to cope with this flexibility, they need to be multi-skilled and initiative taking. What is interesting about the factors M, P and U is that together, through multiplication, they give the magnitude of the total productivity improvement.

MTM and ergonomics

During the period 1994-1995 the Lindholmen Development Co (later transformed into National Institute of Working Life – West, NIWL) applied to a Swedish fund for a project named “MTM as base for ergonomic evaluation” that was granted money for 38 man-weeks of work. The project was mainly carried on by Jonas Laring during his doctoral studies and his tutors Prof. Roland Kadefors, from Lindholmen Development Co, and Prof. Roland Örtengren, from the Human Factors Engineering department of Chalmers University of Technology.

The first status report was issued in May 1996 where the development team suggested a method called ERGO-SAM, that in large parts was what was to become ErgoSAM. The final report was issued in January 1997 suggesting the method ErgoSAM as it is today.

Within the project organization there was a reference committee with 12 representatives from the Swedish industry (*) and the most active were ITT Flygt with Jan-Erik Ekmark and Volvo Car Corp. with Lennart Rasmusson and Troels Nielsen, who assisted with ideas and validation activities.

The project was not granted funding for further validations of the method but Troels Nielsen at Volvo raised internal support for a deeper evaluation of ErgoSAM at the Volvo final assembly in Göteborg carried out in spring of 1997. This second project convinced some production engineers of ErgoSAM usefulness, who kept the method under some activity and further validations at Volvo into the new millennium, carried out by Marita Christmansson at NIWL, Ann-Christine Falck, ergonomist at Volvo and Joakim Amprazis, production engineer at Volvo.

Leif Bohm, Saab, Military Aircraft
Jan-Erik Ekmark, ITT Flygt AB
Roger Frygell, BT Products AB
Tomas Gillberg, Metallklubben, Volvo Personvagnar AB
Kent Kantola, Saab Automobile AB
Lena Moestam, Volvo Personvagnar AB
Troels Nielsen, Volvo Personvagnar AB
Tomas Pettersson, SPC
Lennart Rasmusson, Volvo Personvagnar AB
Arne Rohback, Volvo Personvagnar Komponenter AB
Mats Rudlund, SAAB Military Aircraft
Ove Wigö, IUC/Olofström

The main objective of ErgoSAM is to get an analysis of the physical stress of manual work based on SAM. The system is based on the Cube model, an ergonomic model, where the ergonomic influence factors are the work posture, the motion frequency and the force.

ErgoSAM is a free system, administered by the Nordic MTM Association, and it’s mainly used in the automotive industry in the pre-production development phase by production planners/engineers with some basic ergonomic competence. ErgoSAM is spreading rapidly around the world because it showed a high effectiveness in identifying physically stressful work situations (for the shoulders and back).

It is a complement to more detailed ergonomic methods for work analysis and it illustrates the level and variation of physical stress of a job in the planning phase of production systems and work stations. The beauty of ErgoSAM is the ease of use and the efficiency: the time necessary to perform an ergonomic risk assessment is about 5% compared to the total time spent to run a SAM analysis.