Technology and Work Organization in Mechanical Engineering (NIFA-Panel: 2nd Wave 1992)

Company profile, product structure, use of technology in the company,
qualification, personnel structure, production structure. Use of
computer-aided technologies and conventional technologies in mechanical
engineering. Topics: Company profile: individual companies; cooperation
with other companies; area of business affiliation; company production
and out-sourced processes in product manufacturing; expected turnover
development, personnel development, intensity of competition and demand
development in the next few years; number of departments,
organizational structure and hierarchies of the company; turnover.
Product structure: proportion of business of the most important product
groups; production of standard products or production according to
customer specification; new introduction of innovative products or
further development of current products; introduction of new materials
in production; assessment of future development of the product
structure. Technology use in the company: use of computer-aided
technologies in production and management; use of NC/CNC machines, CAD
and DNC systems; use of computer-aided work planning and programming
(CAP) as well as computer-aided quality control (CAQ); use of
computer-aided inventory systems, control systems and production
planning systems (PPS) as well as use of company expert systems;
proportion of computer-aided processing machines; network of
computer-aided systems in different company function areas. Personnel
structure: information on number of employees and degree of
qualification in the different production areas; change of number of
employees in the last year. Production structure: proportion of
mass-production, small-scale and large-scale production as well as
one-of-a-kind; proportion of production by the company itself; full
utilization of machines and personnel; characterization of various
forms of organization and types of production; group work in the area
of production; size and composition of the teams; tasks taken on by the
teams; organization structure and general characterization of teams.
Computer-aided and conventional technologies in production: number of
employees in the area of computer-aided processing technologies; extent
of machine operators with activities conducted with computer-aided as
well as conventional business equipment in the individual work
processes; bundling task distribution; extent of self-determination of
machine operators; characterization of technology equipment of
production in the company between use of purely conventional to
exclusively computer-aided machines. Qualification: conducting company
measures for further education; satisfaction with internal and external
suppliers of qualification measures; company responsibility for
selection of qualification measure as well as selection of participants
admitted; number of participants and degree of qualification of
employees in such qualification measures; most important criteria in
selection of measures for further education; measures for further
education in connection with innovations in producton; start of
qualification measures before or during indroduction of an innovation.