Technology and Work Organization in Mechanical Engineering (NIFA-Panel: 3rd Wave 1993)

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, work organization in production. Topics: Company profile:
individual company; cooperation with other companies; proportion of
distributed processing in product manufacturing; company manufacturing
and out-sourced processes in product manufacturing; expected
development of turnover, personnel development, intensity of
competition and demand development in the next few years; current order
back-log; concentration of management function in the company on a
single person; existence of longer-term delivery relations; number of
departments, organizational structure and hierarchies of the company;
turnover. Product structure: proportion of turnover 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; assessment of
future development of product structure. Use of technology 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; last system network, type of interfaces and
reasons for selection. 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 within
the company; full utilization of machines and personnel;
characterization of various forms of organization and types of
production; number of employees in the area computer-aided processing
technologies. Work organization in production: extent of activities
conducted by machine operators with computer-aided as well as
conventional business equipment in the individual work processes;
bundling of task distribution; extent of self-determination of machine
operators; group work in the area of production; size and composition
of teams; tasks taken on by the teams; organizational structure and
general characterization of teams. Qualification: type of measures for
further education for employees supported by the company; number of
participants and degree of qualification of employees in such measures
for further education. The following questions were also posed in the
new states: owner; area of business affiliation; number of employees
subsidized by the BfA; company size in 1990; proportion of advance
payment as well as proportion of business of spatially differentiated
customers; significance of different competition strategies. The
following questions were also posed in the old states: most important
sources of information for obtaining software; significance of
recommendation of external advisers and organizations for company
decisions.