Technology and Work Organization in Mechanical Engineering (NIFA Panel: 5th Wave 1995)

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
business; 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 the company; judgement on the distinctness of written
documentation of company-internal regulations; judgement on the
distribution of leadership tasks among different colleagues and
different levels; out-sourcing company areas to independent companies
during the last year; function areas newly taken over in the company;
current order backlog; turnover volume in 1994; order production or
stockpile production; 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 to delivery composition;
responsibility of project teams for cooperation with customers;
proportion of export; classification of proportion of turnover to
individual areas of business; rank order of competitive strategies for
current and new markets; judgement on the current profit situation of
the company and the economic situation of mechanical engineering
altogether. Product structure: characterization of the company as
manufacturer of finished product or manufacturer of individual parts;
proportion of production of standard products and production according
to customer specification; taking on innovative products for the market
or for the company; assessment of future development of product
structure, stockpile production, the economic life of products, time
through the production process as well as delivery of products
according to the just-in-time principle (scale). Use of technology in
the company: use of computer-aided technologies in production and
management; use of NC/CNC machines of CAD and DNC systems; use of
computer-aided work planning and programming (CAP) as well as
computer-aided quality assurance (CAQ); use of computer-aided warehouse
systems, control systems and production planning systems (PPS); use of
company expert systems; information on all work processes supported by
computer-aided technologies and procedures in the company. Personnel
structure: information on number of employees and degree of
qualification in different production areas; change of number of
employees 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 from
outside; proportion of workshop production, team production,
assembly-line production, workbench production and manufacture at
construction site 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;
arrangement of working hours in the company; use of flexible working
hours; type of pay forms for machine operators; commitment of the
company to general union wage agreement or company wage agreement. Work
organization in production: extent of activities in the individual work
processes taken care of by machine operators and workshop personal;
bundling allocation of tasks; extent of self-determination of machine
operators; teamwork in the area of production; number of teams;
organization structure and general characterization of teams.
Qualification: support of qualification measures on the part of the
company; proportion of employees participating from the individual
business areas; company size.