Assembly Evolution (5/7)

- Company investment potential - Assembly system selection is influenced by the   company's policy towards investing in automation. If the company requires a payback period of less than one year then it is unlikely that any form of automated assembly system can be economically justified.
- Annual production volume – This determines the cycle time of the system and automatic systems must run continuously to be justified. If the annual volume is low then the product must be assembled manually.
- Number of parts – This dictates whether the product should be assembled in a series of simple operations or in a single, complex operation. Automatic indexing machines cannot be used for the assembly of more than 8 parts on a single machine. The downtime caused by defective parts rapidly increases for every part above this value. Free-flow transfer should be used for products containing a large number of parts.

Social aspects

The application of technology to the assembly environment has sociological and psychological effects. The economic advantages of certain assembly systems can produce serious social disadvantages. These social effects are not limited to the confines of the factory and they affect the whole of society.

Assembly line work can provide jobs for people challenged with limited abilities. They can soon acquire a skill for a specific task and take pride in doing a job that may seem uninteresting to other people. Working with others on an assembly line often brings a worthwhile feeling of cooperation in producing goods required by society. Some people enjoy the fact that they can start a job and, with minimal training, soon be earning a bonus on piece-rate assembly lines.  A highly specialised assembly task, requiring little dexterity, gives this opportunity. The correct candidate can be selected for an assembly line job by using aptitude and vocational tests. There is scope for job rotation and managers can circulate workers so that they don’t have to do the same operation for long periods. Job rotation also gives the manager with a labour force able to do many operations. This is beneficial to the company when there is a high rate of absenteeism. The assembly line workers soon adopt a rhythm of working, as they do not have to set aside one tool to pick up another.

Many assembly line workers don’t want to use mental effort and choose not to accept responsibility in a job. They prefer to execute a task that allows them to simultaneously talk with their colleagues and listen to music. The workers are also able to take advantage of the reduced selling price of goods assembled by the flow-line method, available in high street stores. They can buy goods that would normally be outside their budget, were it not for the division of labour. Low priced home appliances like washing machines and vacuum cleaners reduce the amount of time required to do work around the household. Homemakers find that they are more available to work on an assembly line, earn money and to gain companionship in a work environment.

Assembly Evolution (6/7)

The social advantages of assembly line work must be considered alongside the often serious psychological disadvantages. There can be a loss of job satisfaction when the worker is not involved in all of the assembly processes that lead to the finished product. The job is repetitive and some workers are unable to take much pride in the task itself, as they don’t have the opportunity of seeing how important their operation is to the successful completion of the product. Boring work may suppress the creative ability of the worker and their time out of work may be spent so passively that life goals may disappear. The effect of carrying out monotonous work is often excessive fatigue. With the decline in individual craftsmanship, many unskilled operatives have no opportunity to display their creative talent at work. Goods built on an assembly line lack the variety that can be created by craftsmen. This dull product uniformity can have an adverse effect on some workers who see the same product every 20 seconds or 1350 times a day.

Assembly lines are usually installed in factories with a large workforce. Each group within the factory is dependent upon the other for the manufacture of the product. Strike action by one group of workers may affect the production of the whole factory. The assembly worker output is effective only during the time spent doing tasks. The cycle time is fixed by the conveyor speed and so it is the periods of time spent off the job that reduce the output.

These psychological problems often cause the assembly worker to create avoidable delays in which they try to gain control of the rate of work.

The social effects of automation are different from those of the division of labour. Many of the simple operations carried out by assembly workers can be substituted with automatic workstations. By replacing workers with automation, these repetitive tasks are executed by machines. The displaced workers are then available to carry out other, less tedious, tasks like supervision and inspection. The automatic assembly machines must be fully utilised to be economically justified. Dedicated automatic assembly machines are less flexible than manual assembly lines. The products must be assembled in large batch sizes.  Overproduction and under-consumption lead to inefficiency.  Severe demand fluctuations and gross lack of demand can’t be accommodated with assembly automation.

Behavioural scientists say that technology can be applied to assembly without employing automation. They believe in job enlargement/enrichment and argue that the division of labour has been taken too far, to produce boring and repetitive assembly line jobs.

Job enlargement increases the number of tasks completed by a single operator and this is intended to give more interest and variety to the job. The same grade of worker does more complex operations.  The net effect of job enlargement is a reduction in the number of operators per assembly line, an increase the cycle time and more flexibility, but an overall increase in assembly costs.

Assembly Evolution (7/7)

Job enrichment increases the responsibility of the assembly worker by giving more opportunity to make decisions. If the responsibility of the assembly worker is increased then it is anticipated that the feeling of job fulfilment will also be increased. Job enrichment, by the strictest definition, is more easily applied to skilled or semi-skilled employees.  Nevertheless, forms of job enrichment have been applied to assembly workers in car factories and electrical companies with some success.

There are many critics of the theories of job enrichment and job enlargement. The trade unionist view of these ideas is that the workers are misled into participation and into accepting leadership, whilst the 'conflict' between the workers and management remains unchanged. Others claim that the nature of the work is only one of the many factors contributing to the attitude of workers towards their jobs. It is the nature of the job itself, that enrichment theorists believe is the difference between satisfied and dissatisfied workers. By changing the nature of the job, social attitude will also change. Others claim that the nature of the work is not the top priority and other factors such as; pay, working conditions, job security and the attitude of the supervisors must also be considered. Assembly workers have individual preferences for the nature of the job. Some prefer routine work, whilst others enjoy performing complex tasks. Many workers purposefully don’t choose the job that they would most enjoy, in return for higher pay. Others, in periods of high unemployment, necessarily accept any paying job to financially support themselves and their families.

The future

Globalization and “offshoring” has transferred assembly work jobs from the developed nations to the developing nations to achieve lower assembly costs.  It was believed by most, a few decades ago, that the displacement of assembly workers would result from the domestic implementation of assembly automation.  It was not foreseen that developing nations’ infrastructure improvements, lowered trade barriers, foreign direct investment encouragement and lower logistics costs would cause the transfer of domestic assembly jobs to overseas locations.

However, the economic benefit of “offshoring” assembly work is now being eroded by higher wage demands in the developing nations, higher logistics prices, copyright infringements and the lower cost of assembly automation.

Assembly automation reduces the cost of producing goods domestically and the availability of goods at economic prices creates a higher standard of living.  The lower labour content in producing goods leads to a shorter working week.  The greater availability of human resources, if used wisely, should be available to achieve a better quality of life for all.