After an audit of their production standards using time studies, a manufacturer of bent plywood components for the furniture industry found that many were way off. Through the years, standards had never been updated to reflect process changes. Some standards were based on historical performance rather than an engineered standard. Some standards came from educated guesses that were never validated. The challenge was how to create accurate standards for hundreds of parts without time studying every single part? The solution was standard data.

IET performed time studies in various departments over the course of several weeks to observe different parts being finished. The size of each part was also measured to determine square inches of finished area. The time to complete a part and the size of the part were plotted against each other to determine if a correlation existed. Overall, a correlation did exist between size and finishing time.

Now parts had to be grouped into size families and a standard assigned to each family. In each process area, three to five families were established and a time standard was assigned. Overall on average, the current standards were found to be 33% tight as compared to the stopwatch. The proposed standard data standards brought the overall average back to neutral as compared to the stopwatch time studies of individual parts.

As a result of the standards data analysis, the company was able to correct their previously inaccurate standards with standard data. The standard data can also be used to generate standards for new and future products.