Showing posts with label motion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label motion. Show all posts

If You Stand Up You

Humans are built to stand up all the time. How ridiculous this sounds, but this is what scientists say. You will die younger, get diabetes, and fall victim to cancer if you sit down too much. Doing exercise won't stop it apparently. Even sitting down at any time is damaging. This is "silly science" because though people sit down longer than ever before they also live longer. Statistics prove this.

Scientists say the body only functions "normally" if we are standing.  Normal systems cease if we sit down. If these body operations work when we are standing what proof is there that they are really necessary? There is no proof. This is just a whim and let's hope it soon passes before people bring cases to court against employers.

There is no more ardent a person against smoking than an ex-smoker. Guess What! The main researcher on all this stuff, Professor Levine, has taken to standing all the time. This bloke is a bit of a nutcase, an obsessive compulsive if there is one - he walks around the room like in the old movies with an almighty long telephone cord. He also invented machines where you can keep walking or cycling while still using a computer. Health and safety has deemed these device too dangerous to use.

Levine wants to change the world like all obsessives. "What you need to do is to create an overall environment of health." Yeah, like those people selling ordinary tea that supposedly makes you lose weight. Beware, the Professor has four large US companies on board to find out how much can be saved in dollars by walking around all the time. You could be next on the test list.
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Health by Ty Buchanan
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Improving National Productivity Will Not Be Easy

There is a problem with the call for improvement in productivity. Those calling for it will not be the ones working harder. The experiment was tried in the 1970s when many UK factories moved in the time and motion guys and started timing machinists.

Unions and workers saw them coming, however. Before they even got going unions tied management down with a new contract that guaranteed workers would not be put on a lower rate if the business ran out of orders. They would be paid at the previous month's average rate when walking around doing very little.  This was done to make sure employees would not lose income due to them working harder. Furthermore, when foremen, leading hands and motion "experts" started milling around a machine workers knew what was about to happen. An older naturally slower machinists was soon moved in and lathe speeds were reduced.  Considering the motion timers had never seen capstan lathes before this was an easy trick.

It took several years before management caught on to what was going on. Ultimately, workers did work harder. They moved up the machinist grades A, B, C and D. Thus improving their pay per task. Obviously, they speeded up machines and produced more per hour to increase overall income.

In the long run businesses failed to make a profit. Paying employees to work harder then continuing to pay them at the same rate when work ran out was plainly stupid. A country needs easy dismissal laws to make a more flexible workforce, a nervous workforce in fear of being sacked.

It must be remembered that a monitored worker must be watched by someone.  Extra staff like a separate time and motion division was a costly burden. Every new product made for new tasks. Time and motion was working harder than anyone.

BHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie is banking on a Coalition win in the next election to change industrial relations laws. Let us hope he is right because business needs a boost. Changing a country's working culture is very difficult though. Pumping money into timing employees raises costs. And workers will duck and weave to block any change forced on them.
  
Source: Based on Wellworthy Engineering, a factory in Ringwood, Hampshire, England.

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Conservation
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