Production planning and management - Agribusiness Management - page 342

the customer has changed—and what they expect and what they are willing to do for the sake
of convenience has continued to drive changes in this area.
Job design
Detailed job design follows process design and is distinguished by the focus on the indi-
vidual operator. Job design can be defi ned as the broad set of activities that determine the
tasks and responsibilities of each employee's job, the employee's surrounding work envi-
ronment, and the detailed order of operations that will be used to complete the tasks required
to meet production requirements. The objectives of job design are two-fold: (1) meet the
production and quality goals of the organization; and (2) make jobs safe, satisfying, and
motivating for the employees.
Traditional job design began with Frederick Taylor and his scientifi c management
approach. Operations were divided into their individual components and studied to deter-
mine the most effi cient manner to perform an operation. Today, job design can be thought of
as comprising two major categories: (1) the social or psychological environment; and (2) the
physical environment.
The social environment
The non-physical or behavioral issues in the workplace are included in the social or psycho-
logical environment . Items such as training, the proper level of supervision, job expectations
and responsibilities, and performance feedback are all subsets of an employee's social envi-
ronment. In particular, employee motivation to consistently perform at high levels is the
result of a positive social environment. Many theories of work motivation have been devel-
oped over the past century.
Psychologists contend that highly repetitive jobs lead to boredom, injuries, and poor job
performance. Declining job performance is often associated with absenteeism, high turno-
ver, grievances, and poor quality. New approaches to job design are an attempt to counter
poor job performance. These approaches include job rotation, job enlargement, job enrich-
ment, and work teams.
Job rotation allows operators to perform different jobs during their shifts. Rotation
increases the overall skills of the employees and minimizes work-related injuries (as long as
the jobs differ in the motions used). Job enlargement is simply increasing the number of
tasks that each operator performs. Here, job repetition is reduced because the cycle time of
each job has increased. Job enrichment expands the duties and responsibilities of the oper-
ator. For example, a technician at a brewery might be responsible for monitoring the fi ltering
process. Job enrichment increases those responsibilities to include taking and analyzing
quality measurements, inspecting the fi lters, and deciding when the fi ltering equipment
needs maintenance.
Work teams are another method of giving employees more responsibility and decision-
making authority. Quality circles, used extensively in Japan, are teams that meet to work out
solutions to quality issues. Other teams are often formed for special purposes. Issues such as
new work policies, the details of an employee bonus plan, or a labor-management issue are
examples of issues that these teams have attacked. Self-managing work teams are also
common. Teams of three to 15 employees meet to organize and run a defi nable work area.
Team members learn all job tasks, rotate among jobs, schedule vacations and overtime,
order supplies, and make hiring decisions.