If more than one productivity
Incentive systems should merge desire and reality of the production logistics
In 21-month research project, IPH have - Institute of Integrated Production Hannover and partners from industry and science designed a software that helps companies in the development of incentive systems. The employees of manufacturing companies should be rewarded in the future not only for their productivity. Also punctuality, inventory and processing times are to play a role.
High adherence to delivery dates, short lead times, high capacity utilization and low inventories - the logistics performance of manufacturing companies is a decisive competitive factor. But what do you do if your wishes and reality are far apart and the overall logistics performance is incorrect? Many companies try to motivate their employees to perform better through incentives such as commissions or additional vacation days. So far, external incentives have mostly been related to the productivity of the workforce. To ensure that, in addition to the capacity utilization, the adherence to delivery dates, lead times and stocks are right, employers should also take these factors into account in their incentive systems, say engineers from Hanover.
Together with partners from industry, the IPH and the Institute for Factory Systems and Logistics (IFA) at Leibniz Universität Hannover have developed a tool that supports companies in creating their own incentive systems. With the help of the software, employers can find out to which key figures they have to link their incentive system in order to support the logistical achievement of goals. For example, if employees were to ensure low stocks, they could receive a bonus if the stock key figure was below a certain value.
Every employer wishes that its employees always act in the interests of the company. In practice, however, the interests of individual employee groups are often far apart. In order to keep inventories low and be able to react flexibly to spontaneous customer requests, production planners, for example, only want to release the orders as late as possible. This behavior ensures short lead times and high adherence to deadlines, but does not always fully utilize production. In contrast to the production planners, the masters in production are very interested in the fact that the orders are released as early as possible. This enables you to plan better and is more flexible in production. Her focus is more on high capacity utilization and on-time delivery than on low stocks.
In the IPH research project, employees of the industrial partners were first asked anonymously about their motivation. The degrees of freedom of the individual during work were also recorded. In the next step, the engineers determined how the employees should behave in order to support the logistics performance and how this behavior could be measured using key figures and linked to incentives. The results were finally combined in one software. It will soon be available as an open source solution free of charge on the website www.soconau.de be downloaded.
The research project "Increase in logistics performance by coordinating incentive systems with logistical goals with the help of socio-technical controlling in order processing" was carried out by the IPH together with the Institute for Factory Systems and Logistics (IFA) at Leibniz University Hannover. Eilhauer Maschinenbau GmbH, Sartorius Weighing Technology GmbH and Paul Beier Werkzeug- und Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG were also involved.
The research project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) through the working group of industrial research associations "Otto von Guericke" e. V. (AiF) on behalf of the Federal Logistics Association (BVL) e. V .. The 21-month project ended on December 31, 2011.
Source: Hannover [IPH]
