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THREE CASE STUDIES

Three recent interventions are presented briefly
to contrast the project and strategic approaches. First it
should be noted that all three companies and projects
had a high degree of similarity:

1

All were threatening closure of the plant
due to competitive pressures

2

All were in the process of talking about
change in manufacturing, but none had
proceeded as far down this path.

3

In all plants, the active cooperation of top
management and union leadership was a
prerequisite of the project.

4

All were plants in mature industries, i.e.
where technological changes in the product
would be less important to the company
survival than manufacturing prowess.

5

All were large plants, with several hundred
operators

In company. A, an ergonomics program was
started as a project. The aim was to teach operators,
foremen and technical staff how to do ergonomics, both
by classroom training and by undertaking a series of
demonstration projects throughout the plant. Each
project was to be assessed by before-and-after measures
to demonstrate how ergonomics increases both system
performance and operator well being. Over a two-year
period, the project was technically successful in that it
did train many people to become users of task analytic
and job redesign techniques. Success could also be
measured by workplace changes successfully
implemented. However, the project’s non-strategic
aspects were constantly in evidence: operators could not always get released for team meetings, promised
changes were rarely completed on time, direct
intervention by the plant manager was often needed to
insure implementation. To date the ergonomics
program has had minimal impact on the plant's goal of
achieving company-wide top status in quality before the
announced deadline of 199 1.

Company B was tackled in a more strategic
manner. First a team of university personnel worked
with the company to establish strategic needs of the
business. This assessment concerned general
management, strategic planning, sales 8z marketing,
financials, labor relations and manufacturing. Human
factors was a small part of the "manufacturing" area.
From this assessment came a series of immediate needs,
represented by projects which, if completed
successfully, would have a major impact of the business.
One of these projects was operator training, using
human factors techniques of knowledge elicitation to
form the basis of a knowledge and skill training
program. The first part of this system has now been
implemented. Company B cites the University's
intervention as a major reason for deciding to stay in the
region, and to locate its new manufacturing facility here

The case of Company C was in many ways an
intermediate case between the two levels. The company
manufactured precision aircraft parts, using small batch
production by skilled machinists. The brief was to
improve manufacturing quality, again using human
factors techniques of process control analysis.
However, the team included specialists to work with
manufacturing management and labor unions at a high
level as well as at shop-floor level to bring some order
to the a11 too typical chaos of high scrap rates, missed
deadlines and the end-of-the-month shipping crisis.
Ergonomics intervention was centered around a
manufacturing cell, and included a complete system for
floor-level process control based on operator input and
human factors techniques. The presence of this working
cell was a major factor in the decision of another
company to but the plant, expand it, and make it their world headquarters for aviation components. Here the
intervention achieved strategic-level results despite a
lack of prior strategic analysis, compens2ted for to some
extent by the non-ergonomic interventions

CONCLUSIONS

In only one company (A) was the intervention
labeled as "ergonomics" and that had the least impact
upon the company's future. In the other two, it is
doubtful whether either management would classify our
interventions as "ergonomics" or "human factors"
despite the role of these disciplines in helping the
company achieve its strategic goals

Case studies in small numbers can never provide
statistical proof of the superiority of one approach over
another, but they can indicate that manufacturing
success may be achieved by allowing our discipline to
be part of a relatively homogeneous team. We may
have to change the way in which we operate, and lose
some of our separate identity, if we truly wish to impact
manufacturing