Productivity Improvement through Work Study Techniques: A Case of a Modern Rice Mill in Ikwo, Ebonyi State

Aim: To explore the use of the work-study techniques in the efficiency improvement in the productivity of a firm or industry. A firm's profit can be increased through productivity improvement by reducing non-value-added operations and adopting a new process for a particular activity.

Study Design: Currently, productivity improvement is a crucial factor in industries. Therefore, one of the primary goals of this firm is to improve productivity which enhances its long-run profit. The most critical tool for enhancing the firm's productivity is work study. Hence, this study noted the bottleneck and provided an appropriate technique for productivity improvement.

Place and Duration of Study: A modern rice mill in Ikwo Ebonyi State Nigeria, between March 2021 and October 2022.

Methodology: A method study was carried out using well-designed questionnaire techniques with interconnected critical analysis of a particular production line. A reasonable work content reduction was obtained when the proposed improvement method was applied. A stopwatch was used to obtain the time study with much emphasis on the standard time for the operation sequences. As a result, each workstation capacity per day was calculated.

Results: The result shows that the firm productivity index improved by 14.29% when method study and work measurement were applied in the production line. Implementation of the proposed production line improved productivity from the old production line by 14.29%. Previously, the work content per ton was 4892 mins. Considering the line balancing and critical analysis of the proposed technique, the proposed work content took 3649 mins to be completed, this leads to a reduction of work content by 1243 mins after the line balancing and analysis. The proposed method helps to increase productivity to 14.29% with 25.41% reduction of work content and line balancing.

Conclusion: In the Ikwo modern rice mill, productivity improvement is considered a critical factor for increasing the profit margin. Therefore, an increase in the profitable index of the firm is the function of productivity improvement, as a result of proper planning and control of the available input variables.