Thank you for covering this sujcebt. One of my greatest pet peeves is when people rush through time studies and then think they understand a process enough to suggest improvements. When this is done by management, they often try to justify what they think should be happening based on what their plan was on paper instead of what is actually happening. This ends up holding associates to a higher expectation than what is actually achievable which leads to distrust of and disgust with management. Often, those doing the time studies fail to capture the non-value added portions of a process and therefore they fail to recognize and eliminate much of the waste.When I facilitate an improvement event, I require participants to spend a whole day in observation and time studies so they can get a clearer picture of the actual current condition, based on facts. Only then do we have the right to suggest changes that will truly deal with eliminating waste. A ten minute time study cannot capture everything that must be done at an operation time studies cannot be rushed. When everyone realizes that, then there will be less anxiety in the associates when they see someone walk up to their process with a stop watch.
