Subject: Industrial Engineering And Management

Topic: Work Study

Difficulty: High

Work sampling is defined as, “A technique in which a statistically competent number of instantaneous observations are taken, over a period of time, of a group of machines, processes or workers. Each observation recorded for a particular activity or delay is a measure of the percentage of time observed by the occurrence.”

Work sampling has three main applications:

1. Activity and delay sampling: To measure the activities and delays of workers or machine. e.g. the percentage of time in a day, a person is working and the percentage that a person is not working.

2. Performance sampling: To measure working time and non-working time of a person on a manual work, and to establish.

3. Work measurement: Under certain circumstances, to measure a manual task, that is, to establish a time standard for an operation.

Advantages of work sampling:

1. Many operations or activities which are impractical or costly to measure by time study can be measured by work sampling.

2. A simultaneous work sampling study of several operators or machines may be made by a single observer.

3. It is usually requires lesser man-hours and costs less to make a work sampling study instead of making continuous time study.

4. Any interruption during study will not affect the results.

Disadvantage of work sampling work sampling:

1. Work sampling is uneconomical for short cycle jobs.

2. It is also uneconomical for studying a single workman or even small group of workmen or machines.

3. It does not normally account for speed of the operator.