Technology and Work Organization in Mechanical Engineering (NIFA Panel: 6th Wave 1996)

Company profile, product structure, use of technology in the company,
qualification, personnel structure, production structure, work
organization in production among small and medium-sized companies in
the area of mechanical engineering. Topics: company profile: individual
company; areas of cooperation with other companies; proportion of
tensile processing in product manufacture; company production and
out-sourced processes in product manufacture; turnover development up
to now and expected, personnel development, profit development and
demand development; judgement on the distinctness of department
organization in company; judgement on the distinctness of written
documentation of regulations within the company; judgement on the
distribution of leadership tasks among different employees and
different levels; organizational changes in the company in the last
year; judgement on current profit situation of the company and the
economic situation of mechanical engineering altogether; current order
backlog; turnover volume in 1995; certification according to ISO
9000ff; production locations outside of the FRG; public support for
modernization of production and development of newer products;
commitment of the company to general union wage agreement or company
wage agreement; existence of works council and internal agreements;
type of internal agreements completed; involvement of the works council
in decisions about technical and organizational changes; judgement on
the cooperation of the works council with changes in the company.
Customer and supplier relations: total number of customers of the
company in the last year; number of customers with high proportion of
turnover; number of regular customers and their proportion in total
turnover; customer structure and their proportions of turnover;
dependence of the company on a few large customers with longer-term
delivery relations; further processing of delivered products by
customers; delivery at regular time intervals; possibility of customers
to make short-term changes of delivery composition; responsibility of
project teams for cooperation with customers; proportion of export and
sales in the region; proportion of preprocessing obtained from the
region, the Federal Republic or abroad; proportion of standard products
or products manufactured according to customer specification. Product
structure: characterization of company as manufacturer of finished
products or manufacturer of individual parts; proportion of production
of standard products and production according to customer
specification; taking on new innovative products; assessment of future
development of product structure, production to stockpile, economic
life of products, fluctuations in demand, the proportion of 3rd-party
services purchased, the number of emergency orders, time through the
production process as well as delivery of products according to the
just-in-time principle (scale); type of services offered, such as
application support, consultation, waste disposal, documentation, spare
part service, financing, maintenance, schooling, software development.
Use of technology in the company: information on all work processes
supported by computer-aided technologies and procedures in the company.
Personnel structure: number of employees in production and management
as well as information on their degree of qualification; newly hired as
well as employees retired in the last year. Production structure:
proportion of mass production, small and large series production as
well as one-of-a-kind production; proportion of company production;
reasons for out-sourcing production tasks as well as (if appropriate)
accepting tasks in the company from outside; proportion of workshop
production, team production, assembly-line production, workbench
production and production at construction sites in the company;
characterization of technology available in production; capacity
utilization in the last year, regarding machines and personnel;
dependence of organizational and technical changes in the company on
requirements outside the company. Work organization in production:
extent of activities taken care of by machine operators and workshop
personnel in the individual work processes; teamwork in the area of
production; number of teams; organization structure and general
characterization of teams; organization of working hours such that
departure from usual working hours is possible; establishing difference
by company management or employees; time period to balance core working
hours. Qualification: support of qualification measures on the part of
the company; proportion of employees participating from the individual
business areas; company size.