© DIGITALVISION
The line system was first
conceptualized and executed by
Henry Ford in 1914 at his car
manufacturing company. The
line system drastically reduced
the time of manufacturing cars
from 728 minutes to 93 minutes.
It created a revolution in the
manufacturing industry.
The concept of specialization
was considered to be the nervous system of the assembly
line. The manufacturing system
as deployed today is reminiscent
of the concepts Henry Ford started, as far as job specialization is
concerned. This is not limited to
the manufacturing industry;
other industries follow the same
line-manufacturing principles
directly or indirectly. A bank
teller is an example of an
employee who is repeatedly
doing the same job for many
years. During the authors’ personal experience while at Tata
Motors, a similarity of process
was witnessed on the shop floor
where a machine operator was
involved in the same operation
for more than ten years. The reason behind the repetitive nature
of the work assignation is to create specialization, aimed at creating efficiency in the organization.
On the negative side, the departure of that specialist from the
organization forms a vacuum.
It is very difficult for a company to set up any standard
processes for an individual. It
seems to be impossible for big
organizations such as Tisco,
Infosys, SBI, Microsoft, Dell, and
General Motors. With this process, can
these organizations guarantee 100%
process compliance? How can you monitor any individual about his process?
Practically speaking, it seems impossible. Organizations usually measure
employees based on their individual
input/output performance. It is this
model that is the root cause of the creation of the nonstandardized process;
workers are too focused on meeting
deadlines given by their supervisors to
follow guidelines. Today, every organization demands efficiency to get an edge
over other organizations.
In companies where enterprise
resource planning (ERP) systems like
systems applications and products
(SAP) in data processing have already
DEVELOPING JOB-ROTATION
STANDARDS WITH MATH
BHARAT MISHRA AND NIKHIL AGARWAL
BUSINESS SUCCESS IS LINKED TO
process standardization and innovative
approaches to process execution.
Process is one of the differentiating factors among the organization, which
cannot be imitated exactly. Until now,
the job rotation concept has been used
to enhance the skill of workers and to
remove repetitiveness on the job. In
this article, the authors have introduced
an innovative solution to ensure that
the process in an organization is standardized through job rotation. A mathematical solution is proposed to enhance
the understanding of contemporary
methodology. The authors are trying to
add new dimensions of benefits to job
rotation, which would result in process
standardization by reducing the time
period. The challenges in implementing
14
our proposed solution are discussed in
this article.
Problem statement
Since childhood, volleyball has
amazed us with its different styles,
which we still don’t find in most of the
games we play. Our love of the game is
rooted in the opportunity of rotation. A
player who is doing service will be
moved in front of the net and will get
to handle the ball differently. Theorists
called this job rotation: It is a belief that
everyone has an equal ability to play
the game. This unique feature of job
rotation in volleyball defies the concepts of football or cricket in which
every player has a specialized role that
is based on their capability and potential to play.
0278-6648/07/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2244777
IEEE POTENTIALS
been implemented, the employees of
the company find their own ways to
manipulate the system. In the procurement division of Tata Motors, some
workers were procuring material without raising schedule agreements. If a
schedule agreement was raised, they
changed the schedule lines manually. A
material requirement planning (MRP)
system had no meaning for them.
Procurement of material was done
according to the personal preferences
and convenience of the procurement
officers, which were different than
those defined by the ERP system.
Generally, individuals do follow the
standard processes defined by SAP but
their numbers are few.
Problem analysis
If an employee is following up two
different processes, A and B, to accomplish his job, he will develop his own
individual process, which is I ∈ (A, B)
as shown in Fig. 1. Let us try to understand what the probable reasons for the
evolution of individual processes could
be. Let process A consist of four different steps and B of three
A = {X1 , X2 , X3 , X4 }
B = {Y1 , Y2 , Y3 }.
For a better understanding of the situation, let process A be the ordering of
raw material from a vendor and process
B be the receiving of raw material.
X1 = purchase requisition from production department
X2 = request for quotation from the
vendors
X3 = raising orders for procurement
X4 = sending purchase order to
concerned vendor
Y1 = receiving invoice for a material
Y2 = storing the material in proper
store location
Y3 = quality checks and inventory
updating.
Let R1 , R2 , and R3 be operations
where
R1 = some senior person has
ordered something without
raising a purchase requisition
(manually insert purchase requisition in the system)
R2 = just extend the old purchase
order and manually change the
schedule agreement
R3 = intimate the information of
purchase order through phone.
Now, some purchaser follows these
nonstandard processes and creates
errors in the systems that are not immediately visible. He will mix everything
and create a hybrid standard model as
well as nonstandard steps. The new set
will be a union of both processes
I = {X 1 , X 2 , R1 , R2 , Y 1 , Y 3 }.
The ideal solution
Analyzing the situation, we can isolate the reasons that employees do not
follow some standardized steps while
adhering to others. Those include the
unwillingness of the worker to engage
in activities that he does not see directly
contingent to his primary function. A
more intuitive reason is that the traditional definition of a job is getting
things done, and this betrays the concept of processes and protocols therein.
Since supervisors do not have much
time to keep vigilance on individual
employees and whether or not
everyone has followed certain
steps, it is up to the individual to decide how he
deals with the external
environment. However,
motivation should also
Standard
come from the superProcess
A
visor. It seems quite
simple but everyone in
the company does not
have the willpower and
self-discipline to follow
the previously mentioned
steps. Let us study the external
factors and how some different
process might evolve if the above
mentioned conditions are given.
The set I is carried out by an
employee of the company for a long
period of time with some minor
changes. The longevity of his individual
standards need not come into danger
because the requirement of the organization is not I or A or B. But, the output function doesn’t vary much with
changes in A, B and I
O = f (A, B ) ≈ f (I, emp loye e).
This f (A, B ) are independent of human
factors by design. But f ( I, employee) is
very much dependent upon them. The
chances are higher if the output efficiency delivered by the latter function
is more than the first one. Still, it
doesn’t fit in with the environment
because it cannot create a coherent system in the company—the employees of
the organization will not have common
interface by which they can communicate in the same way as others with the
information technology system or any
other standard systems that may exist
in the organization. The input/output
model doesn’t create the sustaining
model. The organization will depend
more and more upon employee factors;
more and more, their product will
reflect the human factors that come
into play. This will not create the same
output every time.
At Tata Motors, we never found two
trucks that looked the same: the products had clearly discernable differences
and though people were trying very
hard to remove them, they were doing
so without knowing why the differences existed in the first place. The
reason for these differences was that
what the assembly and parts units
worked on differed from shift to shift.
Standard
Process
B
Individual
Process
I
Fig. 1 Individual process is a combination
of process A and B and its own process I
This was more so in the heavy vehicles
department than the automobiles
department because supervisors were
not as particular about enforcing standardized processes in the former. At
the same time, the enforcement of
these protocols in the automobiles section was a fallback to the arcane supply chain practices, as opposed to the
just in time philosophy of minimum
supervision.
In an organization moving towards
modern paradigms of production, internal workings must move toward supervisory coaching roles as opposed to
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006
15
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2244777
control-oriented management. The production workers must be allowed to
make decisions in real time that was traditionally reserved for the foreman. The
foreman must be able to delegate
authority that has been held so far by
the floor manager and so on. Our concept of job rotation incorporates this
view by allowing the line workers to
formulate their own standards with minimum interference from management.
Solution
The final discussion is our comprehensive solution to this problem, which
is best explained by stating it mathematically. The solution is very much applicable to big companies, especially those
organizations in which many workers
share the same job profile. In this solution, it is important to find clusters and
define them to get the best output for
this type of problem. We cite examples
from Tata Motor’s supply chain management (SCM) department as a generic
manufacturing organization but it is
equally applicable to other sectors.
Suppose there are three employees
working in the SCM department of Tata
Motors. They are carrying out different
functions in the department: The first
one is doing goods receiving on gate,
the second one is reviewing invoices
and maintaining excise clearance for different suppliers. The third is posting
vendor invoices and updating inventory
in a store. Now, we will create a functions matrix for these employees. It will
describe the different steps required of
the employee to accomplish a particular
job. The first column of the matrix for
any employee is his current job. The
second and third columns will show the
steps followed by the employee if given
the chance to perform two other
employee jobs. For easy understanding,
it is assumed that these three processes
involve only four steps each
x1
E1 = y 1
z1
r1
E2 = y 1
k1
r5
E3 = y 1
z1
r1
y2
k1
x2
j1
k2
r4
y2
k1
x2
j1
z2
x3
j3
k3
x1
y3
k2
r2
j2
z3
r3
y2
z4
x2
j2
z3 .
Where xi , yi , zi are standard process
steps required to accomplish the job of
16
three employees, ri , ji , ki are individual
steps followed by employees to complete the job. These are nonstandard
steps. We now rotate the jobs of the
employees with regular interval, which
is T. What should be of value in this
time period? This is a vital question for
the management of the company or the
departmental head. But, we can show
that the lower the time period, the better the process and the suggested value
would be of a small integer multiple in
the cycle-time of the job at hand.
Where there are differences in the three
profiles, T must be roughly the least
common multiple of the three cycle
times at a minimum.
E1
E2
T
E3
Fig. 2 Job rotation of three employees
for a particular job with time period T
There are three other points that
should be deliberated before fixing a T.
1) T must encompass a period long
enough for deviations from the last
frozen process to emerge. Once a
process that is good enough to avoid a
substantial or noticeable deviation is
formulated, it can be regarded as a
mature process and held as a convention from there onwards.
2) The period must encompass a
period long enough for deviations from
the desired quality band (on quality
control charts) to emerge. A process to
emerge from this test will firmly establish its superiority over all other process
designs.
3) One last desired characteristic of
these rotations will be for a single
employee to take over a half-finished
job. The newcomer will have to face the
clutter left over by the one he replaces,
and in this way, the nitty-gritty of the
job will emerge without any special
effort. The only provision to be made is
for the rotation time T to be effected
with a fixed overlapping of jobs.
Let us now see the analysis to validate
the assumption. Suppose E1, E2 and E3
are rotated according to the process
below with regular time interval T.
The three employees, E1, E2, and E3,
will rotate three job stations between
them. As each passes to a new station,
he would like to settle into a pattern of
working that suits him best, adopt some
standard practices, and adapt some to
his particular way of working. At first,
this should create minor conflicts. But
since the pattern of job change is circular within a cluster of closely related
activities, all three will become aware of
problems that are created when they
mess with standard processes and how
these affect other roles. They will come
to an understanding. They may come
across practices that could be modified
or done away with altogether to
achieve better results. If three trained
employees rotating in such a manner
can come to a consensus on these
opinions, they could forge a new standard process that would be much more
practical and less likely to deviate from
than either the erstwhile standard
process or the particular brand of activities in which any of the three were
previously engaged but in isolation.
This is simple group dynamics.
When we were working on our
masters from Virginia Tech, we used to
work on projects in groups that often
consisted of more than three people.
Everyone would circulate mail regarding
any problems and improvements they
came across. In doing so, we were formulating common standards for the
process. We always tried to find standard ways to communicate to each
other and, at the same time, write our
software code in such a way that it
would be understood by every member
of the group. These activities lead to
standardized system development
unknowingly, in other words, naturally,
by which we could function in perfect
synchronization. So while a databasecentric project would find, say, E1 working as the designer, and E2 and E3 as
coders, the roles would rotate in a J2EE
project where E1 and E2 would become
the coders and E3 the designer. This
would keep all of us in constant awareness of the problems that the others
would encounter in their role and thus,
we would appropriately insert comments in the code, communicate
changes, and so on.
IEEE POTENTIALS
Now, we come to the example given
earlier. When E2 is replaced by E1, all
the nonstandardized steps that are not
common among them will be removed.
A common row of matrix will evolve
between them for job2- [y1 y2 j1 y3 ].
Why would they want to establish a
standard process? Let us understand the
chemistry of the process. When two
people start developing a process to do
a particular job, their behavior will be
similar to the chemical reaction that
starts to find its equilibrium position
Guid ed by senior management
P1 + P2 + P3 + ←
→P
where P is the more standardized
process.
Whenever a problem occurs, the
situation (reaction) will try to shift
more towards the left hand side. The
guidance given by management will
act as a catalyst that will enhance the
reaction process towards the right
hand direction to achieve equilibrium
faster. The only criterion is to achieve
a more standard process by shifting
the role of an employee. There is
some probability that, in a given cluster, one employee will try to have
some nonstandard steps and, as a
result, the process as a whole will
contain fewer nonstandard steps. And
this will become lesser and lesser by
making the cluster bigger in scope.
It would be prudent to list three
properties of rotational clusters:
1) The clustering should be within
closely related bounds of the
employee’s training, educational, and
experience.
2) The clustering should involve jobs
of a similar nature.
3) The clusters should be manageable in size and not cut too far across
departmental boundaries.
Conclusions
Like any new implementation, job
rotation for the proposed ends may not
be initially favorable. While job rotation
for other strategic ends at the top management levels is a systematic practice
for successor determination and is even
used to avoid hiring outside talent, at
the lower echelons, it is a pain to
implement. Factors vary from inertia to
more pessimistic views that job rotation
somehow stunts vertical growth
through an organization and thus raises
and benefits. However, our proposal to
rotate employees through a cluster of
closely related jobs does not preclude
vertical growth. By making job rotations
a policy rather than a one-time experiment, employees can be quickly
inducted into the strategy. Rotations are
already a practice at enterprises ranging
from McDonald’s to LG Electronics. The
reasons for this practice vary from
keeping the job interesting for the
workers to seasoning executives for
succession to top-responsibility positions. Through this article, we have proposed bringing rotations to map with
organizational goals.
It is possible that the initial response
of the system may not lead to the
desired output. But, the initial reaction
to any operational changes is not perfect, and management should move
step by step by building confidence in
the employee. We need to implement
this technique in one cluster of jobs at a
time and proceed horizontally in a
phased manner through the pyramid.
Of course, the job stations must be geographically close to each other, otherwise solutions may not work effectively.
When the desired output is achieved,
we can move ahead to find different
clusters of people. There is no common
employee in two different clusters that
are rotating at the same time. There
may be overlap between clusters and
the clustering can be done across
departmental boundaries as well.
Where to implement this solution?
Some readers may not come out with a
clear idea about the implementation of
the solution. The problem we generally
find is in those work environments
where more repetitious jobs are
involved. This may occur in manufacturing, banking, electronics, and software industries. The conventional benefits of job rotation still hold and people
are bound to like the break from the
monotony of performing the same
repetitive task year in and year out.
While the human resource department
of any company thinks that job rotation
is done to enhance an employee’s skill,
they may not recognize its real value.
Acknowledgments
Authors are thankful to Mr. Nitish
Shukla, Participant—PGDSM MIT, SPJIMR
for extending help in editing of the article.
Read more about it
• “Henry Ford, (1863–1947)” [Online].
Available: http://inventors.about.com/
library/inventors/blford.htm
• P.W. Atkins, Physical Chemistry.
London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997
• Tata Motors [Online]. Available:
http://www.tatamotors.com
About the authors
Bharat Mishra (bharatmishra1@
yahoo.com) is a student of the PGDSM
MIT program at SPJIMR, Mumbai, India.
Nikhil
Agarwal
(nagarwal@
spjimr.ernet.in) is a professor of information management at the SP Jain
Institute of Management and Research,
Mumbai, India. He is the chief editor of
JIBC and an adviser to UN GAID.
EE career strategies begin with education
(continued from page 6)
are doing their jobs correctly, then they
will see you are the person they must
hire. A little tip—a valuable product in
the open market means that the engineer has produced a design that consistently meets or exceeds the consumer’s
expectations and can be manufactured
cheaply enough so that the company
makes a good profit. That’s why you get
paid. If you’re not quite sure how to do
that, you should try to find out from
someone who does.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006
About the author
Butch Shadwell has been working in
electronics since he was 12 years old.
Starting with vacuum tube technology, he
has designed systems through the evolution of transistors, SSI, MSI, and LSI. He
has worked with almost every kind of
technology in the electronics industry,
including applied R&D in nuclear medicine, opto-electronics, electronic warfare,
robotics, industrial automation, machine
vision, artificial intelligence, digital televi-
sion, special sensors, and embedded
microcontrollers.
A Senior Member of the IEEE, for the
last 15 years, he has authored the “Brain
Teaser Challenge,” a monthly humorous
column with a technical challenge that is
published in many IEEE newsletters and
magazines worldwide.
He is an active volunteer in the IEEE
Student Activities Committee and has spoken to many student branches. For more
details, visit http://www.shadtechserv.com.
17