Mfg-A4 — Analysis and Design of Work
Methods of work analysis, including process analysis, activity charts, person machine charts, operation analysis, micromotion study, fundamental hand motions and film analysis. Principles of motion economy, method study, motion and time study, rating factor, performance factor, allowances and standard data. Pre-determined motion time systems. Work sampling. Wage payment. Motivation and work. Wage incentives. Job enrichment. Software available in the field of analysis and design of work.
Subject outline
Mfg-A4 Analysis and Design of Work is a Manufacturing Engineering technical exam (PEO National Examination 08-Mfg-A4) covering the work design and work measurement a manufacturing engineer is expected to be able to do: operations analysis and its nine primary approaches; the graphical tools of methods analysis — the five ASME symbols, operation and flow process charts, the flow diagram and the human-machine chart; motion economy and the classification of movements; machine coupling, and the cost per piece when one operator runs several machines; stopwatch time study with performance rating and allowances; predetermined motion time systems, MTM and MOST; work sampling and its sample-size arithmetic; job evaluation; wage incentive plans; and working conditions, safety and the interior environment.
The paper is 3 hours and closed book; the rubric permits one of two approved calculators, the Casio or the Sharp, and says nothing else about what may be taken in. Answer any five of the seven questions: any five constitute a complete paper, only the first five as they appear in the answer book are marked, and all questions are of equal value at 20 marks, each in three parts with the mark split — roughly 7/7/6 — printed on the front page, so it tells you exactly how long each part deserves. The rubric asks for point form by name: "Write your answers in point-form whenever possible, but fully. Show all the calculations."
The question papers are headed 98-Ind-A2 and 17-Ind-A2 — the Industrial Engineering listing of the same examination, under two vintages of the code. Same paper, same syllabus, two faculty codes.
What this course gives you
Worked solutions — all fourteen questions from May 2011 and December 2019, solved in full, with every calculation independently re-derived — and five that do not survive the check flagged where they go wrong. Where a published figure stands it is used; where it does not, the original is shown and a flagged correction of its own — headed, and set into the working at the exact step that goes wrong — explains what went wrong and gives the corrected value. Nothing has been silently overwritten. The five: the drill-press time study, the same question on both papers, adds an element the paper says is performed during the machine cycle, so the standard time is 0.759 min/pc, not 0.8855; the December "optimum number of machines" comes from a square-root formula that does not exist, giving four machines where costing the two integers either side of n₁ gives three; the May machine-coupling question never uses the four machines it is asked about and mistakes the servicing time for the machine time, giving a unit cost of 24.07 where the answer is 24.28 dollars a piece; the December work-sampling question subtracts the allowances from the working day, which tightens a standard that an allowance exists to loosen — corrected, it is 2.208 min/pc; and the May sample-size answer of 62 observations is the absolute-accuracy figure, which pins the idle proportion only to somewhere between 10% and 30% — the relative accuracy the convention asks for needs 1537. Two papers that cover the pool — six sittings recycle the same questions: May 2011, December 2015, May 2018, December 2018, May 2019 and December 2019 draw on one pool. The drill-press time study appears in every sitting (the same question in May 2011 and December 2019, with new numbers in May 2019), there are exactly two machine questions across all of them — one in each paper solved here — and the discussion questions on operations analysis, motion economy, MTM, work sampling and job evaluation repeat almost word for word. Study notes — eleven condensed topics, organised the way the paper is: how this paper works and how to choose your five; operations analysis and the nine primary approaches; charts, the graphical tools of methods analysis; motion economy and the classification of movements; human-machine charts and machine coupling; stopwatch time study; predetermined motion time systems, MTM and MOST; work sampling; job evaluation; wage incentive plans; and working conditions, safety and the interior environment. Where the published solutions go wrong, the notes say so and give the method that does work. Practice & case studies — ten multiple-choice questions aimed at the decisions that actually cost marks, and five longer problems — machine coupling, a time study with two internal elements, a work-sampling study, a human-machine chart, and a wage-incentive case study — with worked answers for every one. Formula sheet — two pages covering charts and symbols, motion economy, machine coupling, stopwatch time study, work sampling, MTM and job evaluation: everything both papers actually use, and nothing else. This is a closed-book exam, so the sheet is for the week before, not the desk. Printable resources — ten cards, including a "which method do I use?" table keyed to the exact wording the questions use and an exam-day card that carries the five published errors as checks to run on your own working, plus four blank exam stationery templates. Practice papers — two question papers on their own, unmarked, for a timed run: December 2019, the sitting solved above, so you can sit it cold and mark yourself against the worked answers, and May 2019, a third sitting with the same seven-question shape.
Throughout, 74 figures were drawn for this pack — 38 in the solutions, 34 in the notes and 2 in the practice problems — so the human-machine charts, process charts, flow diagrams, cost curves, time-study build-ups and sampling curves are shown rather than described.