Aero Gear

Before implementing lean production methods, employees were only working on one machine at a time. Since the implementation of lean production, each employee could be working on a number of machines at the same time, completing different tasks on each machine that require different amounts of time to complete. Currently Aero Gear is tracking the machines that the employee is working on and evenly divides the time between all the machines, which is not an accurate measure of actual time spent by each employee on each task. This results in distortion of actual direct labor hours and costs associated to each task. It also does not allow Aero Gear to properly track employee productivity and ensure that tasks are completed efficiently. One way to rectify this issue is for Aero Gear to change the way they track employee time spent on each task. They could require employees to log the time spent on each machine separately and according to tasks that are completed, which would provide them with more accurate data to track both the time each machine is in use and the total machine hours required to produce a given product, as well as the time it takes each employee to complete a given task. Logging time could be divided as follows: Machine: 1, 2, 3; Tasks: set-up; production of part 1, 2, 3; maintenance. This will allow management to gain a better understanding of the actual product costs related to labor and identify efficient and effective employees, as it will give them the actual times on each machine broken down to tasks and employees completing the tasks. This change should increase significantly the time it takes employees to enter their time as tasks performed by each machine could be predefined, all employees would have to do is enter their time under the task for each machine they are working on.

As mentioned above, employees are not required to accurately track their actual time spent on working with each machine; therefore, this does not produce useful...