Manpower planning and cycle-time reduction of a labor-intensive assembly line

Abstract

The demand for Gas Lift Mandrels(GLM) in the oil and gas industry is expected to increase over the next few years, requiring Schlumberger's GLM assembly line to increase their manufacturing capacity. Given the labor-intensive nature of Schlumberger's GLM assembly line, other than implementing kaizens and purchasing more equipment, it is important to also consider manpower issues. This research analyzes manpower management issues in the GLM assembly line to meet the projected increase in customer demand over the next three years. A detailed time study was conducted to understand and characterize all processes in the assembly line, before manpower plans were drawn up for each year till 2013. Several manpower scheduling concepts were incorporated in the manpower plan, such as Job Rotation and Workforce Flexibility to optimize the rate of utilization, human performance and well-being. By clustering processes together, the labor utilization rate can be increased to more than ninety percent. A new position of grinders has also been proposed to assist in various grinding operations, in order to reduce the cycle times of processes, to help workers gain better focus in their work and to reduce the cost of labor.