Sunday, December 10, 2023

Industrial Engineering in Germany

German Association Industrial Engineering
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Paper

https://ritsumei..nii.ac.jp/record/1802/files/E61_5yamazaki.pdf



To be edited and rewritten

Deployment of Industrial Engineering in Germany
A Siemens US study trip report in 1963, the end of the productivity movement, noted that the predetermined time method then being implemented in the world of capitalism was without exception developed and tested in the US prior to being made public. 

For example, WF(work factor)was developed in the US in the mid-1930s, implemented after 1938, and then used internationally from 1952. In the International Management Conference held in September 1963, there was a discussion on issues of WF time standards and WF use

. MTM(methods time measurement)was developed by H. B. Maynard, G. J. Stegemerten, and J. L. Schwab in the 1940s at Westinghouse , and spread after the war.
Even in Germany, according to a 1948 source, manufacturers began to place great significance on work study 
. For example, electrical manufacturer AEG noted that from the 1950s to the 1960s, the rationalization of work and time studies played an important role in productivity improvement 8)
. However, by the mid-1950s, the German organization REFAʼs activities and wage payment methods were becoming prominent
9)
. For example, in a March 1956 survey of 2,655 corporations conducted by ILO, REFA systems accounted for as much as 80% of the work study methods used by manufacturers, with REFA systems having taken a dominant position.
However, the situation changed by the latter half of the 1950s. The increasing importance of work and time studies, along with the further development of REFAʼs methods, is
particularly apparent in the US predetermined time method. Even in West Germany, use
of such methods expanded greatly by the end of the 1950s , and REFA was instrumental in
its deployment. In the early 1960s, REFA was at the IE expansion stage, and had translated a US handbook into German . Upon publication of this translated IE Handbook, the first education course in this field was conducted using improved teaching methods
. However,
by around 1960, the original industrial engineering training had been around for quite some
time in Anglo-Saxon countries, and in West Germany the opportunity to receive training in
the IE field was largely nonexistent apart from the efforts of several organizations like
REFA
14)
.
IE training began to significantly increase in the 1960s. The structure of training events
( )

fundamentally changed in 1969, with IE courses comprising 24.7% of all education courses
15)
.
In addition, the number of work study personnel trained in WF and MTM had risen to
2,491 by 1966

. There were a total of 52 IE seminars by the mid-1973, and about half of
the candidates who completed the course were in IE positions, with the remainder being
managers responsible for production control or business management, heads of labor science departments, or their assistants

. Regarding IE materials and books, 1967 saw the publication of a companion volume to the IE Handbook, thereby completing the REFA standard works for engineer training. Further, as REFAʼs third original report, a magazine was published for work studies and IE managers
, and from 1971 onward, Industrial Engineering Magazine was published on a bi-monthly basis

.
Responding to wages and cost pressures was an issue in the spread of IE in the mid1950s when Germany was at full employment. Because of this issue, the predetermined time method was implemented primarily for labor efficiency(in job design). However, the
overall spread of the predetermined time method was generally first considered successful
during the downturn of 1966/67 and its subsequent easing of the tight labor market
20)
. We
will now examine the deployment of WF and MTM in detail.

2 Deployment of Work Factor Method
WF deployment was accomplished with the cooperation of US corporations and through
licensing methods. REFA assisted in the deployment and spread of predetermined time
methods such as WF

. On February 1, 1958, REFA and the Work-Factor Company signed
an agreement on implementing WF training courses in West Berlin and West Germany
22)
.
The Work- Factor Company was a technical consulting organization that provided global
IE services to economic and industrial institutions
23)
. After extensive research into number
systems(MTM, WF, BMT, DMT, etc.), the REFA Institute for Labor Science became a licensee of the Work- Factor Company
24)
. REFA also acquired the rights to translate the
Work Factor Handbook and the rights to use the German translation which was based on
the Dutch company, Philips. The second WF training course held in September 1958 was
conducted by two people from Philips under contract with the Work-Factor Company, and
Philips was heavily involved
25)
. However, the situation changed greatly in the 1960s ; by 1964,
REFA instructors were using the original German training materials
26)
. Other corporations,
such as AEG, Bosch, Siemens, and Olympia, acquired their own WF licenses, and deployed
the American system
27)
.
At the beginning of the 1960s, as the productivity movement was drawing to a close, job
design was becoming more important than standard time settings because of the rapid onset of mechanization
28)
. REFA regarded WF as an appropriate tool for job design
29)
, and the focus of its activities shifted increasingly away from predetermined time methods toward job
design in the latter half of the 1950s. In this manner, the significance of motion study increased, and WF deployment also became more significant

3 Deployment of MTM
Study trips under the auspices of the US Technical Assistance Plan played an important
role in the study and deployment of MTM methods, to which REFA also greatly contributed
31)
. Many of REFAʼs regional branches saw the possibility of providing information on
US time study systems
32)
.
According to a source in 1963, MTM saw its greatest usage in the US but was also
spreading in Germany
33)
, primarily being taught and spread by foreign consulting engineers.
In comparison with WF, MTM had a more long-term, subdued role; however, in 1963, companies that had executed it formed the German MTM Association
34)
. The greatest impediment to European worker productivity, other than the delay in mass production and largescale lot production, was supposedly job design and work flow, which was far weaker than
in the US. The German MTM Association accepted the US predetermined time method in
1964/65, adapted it to German circumstances, and disseminated it throughout Germany
35)
.
The German MTM Associationʼs membership grew 2.6 times, from 115 corporations in
1966 to approximately 300 in 1973. The employees of these member companies more than
quadrupled, from roughly 500,000 to 2,000,000. More than half of these member companies were in the precision equipment(30% in 1974)and metal processing(23% in 1974)
industries, and other industries included clothing(14%), steel(4%), chemical(4%), service
and banking(5%)industries
36)
. In many cases, activities sponsored by organizations such as
the German MTM Association were made possible with the cooperation of corporations
and similar organizations in the US. The new US motion and time study methods were often implemented in Germany through private US companies
37)
.
4 Deployment of the Work Factor Method and MTM in Major Industrial Sectors
Looking next at major industrial sectors, IE methodologies were first deployed in various
areas within mass production management, but the primary focus was the electrical and
automotive industries. At Bosch, a transition to WF methods began in the mid-1950s, but
in 1960 the decision was made to use MTM, and work councils and company management
signed a shop agreement. MTM deployment had special priority in the production department, and was afterward expanded for the first time, though on a smaller scale, to the
maintenance and control departments
38)
. Daimler-Benz also used MTM from the 1960s onward. Although in retrospect, there were but a few cases of MTM being used at DaimlerBenz, in the German automotive industry in general or even in various departments within
the electrical industry, MTM proved to be the best tool for job design and time economics
39)
.
A 1965 IG Metall report states that WF, MTM, and other predetermined time methods
were gaining popularity in the metals industry. For example, corporations in the steel industry were systematically moving toward the streamlining of maintenance and repair departments using predetermined time methods based on the deployment of wage incentive
systems. The shipbuilding industry also increased its usage of predetermined time methods
40)
.
Deployment of predetermined time methods in maintenance tasks could also be seen in the
chemical and mining industries
41)
. A 1969 report noted that usage of IE methods were not
( )
274 The Ritsumeikan Economic Review(Vol. 61,No. 5)
868
limited to the machinery or transportation equipment industries, but was spreading to steel
and metals, clothing, construction, chemicals, and even service industries
42)
. For example,
MTM was being used in the sewing industry by the 1950s
43)
, and all sorts of MTM-based
data systems could be used to locate time data within the clothing and machinery industries
44)
. To German industries, IE was an important element in creating satisfactory management results and competitive advantage
45)
.
In the electrical industry, WF attracted attention at the end of the 1950s at Siemens as
an aid to job design planners and production equipment designers, and both WF and
MTM were the most well-known work study methods
46)
. Siemens implemented approximately
15 WF information education courses by 1962, and in addition to sponsoring many seminars for supervisors and specialists had roughly 100 WF-trained workers in their factories.
The largest portion of these trained personnel worked in production preparation and work
planning departments for large-lot and mass production. The Siemens Work Factor Group
comprising nine members from three Siemens companies was formed, and the results of
their work were tested and then conveyed to the REFA Institute, after which they could
be adopted by any company that had WF-trained personnel
47)
. An “IE Theory and Practice
in the US”-themed study group participated in a US IE Institute international conference
and a WF international conference, and visited Westinghouse, Bell and Howell, Teletype,
and the Work-Factor Company. Siemensʼ WF instructors were instrumental in providing
guidance in the preparation of Germany’s public WF manual. By April 1964, a total of
615 people had participated in 35 WF training courses held in West Germany. Twelve of
these courses were taught internally for Siemensʼ organizations, and Siemens had approximately 150 trained WF personnel. In two particular teacher training courses, there were 31
REFA instructors qualified to teach, of which eight were Siemens employees. At the time,
27 major corporations, such as Siemens, AEG, Olympia, and Zeiss, were formally using WF,
and it was becoming clear that it would be necessary to adapt WF to the overall situation
in Germany as well as to the special environment within Siemens. To that end, Siemens
formed a team of specialists experienced in WF. This study group was conscious of the
need to modify WF for a number of reasons, and they applied Siemensʼ scientific human
engineering research not only to psychological effects but also to specific operations. This
same group published a companion volume to the internal Siemens manual so that WF
could be uniformly used across Siemens organizations
48)
, and a document explaining WF was
created in 1970
49)





Ud. 10.12.2023
Pub. 4.10.2013

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