De-skilling Labour
It is no new fact that almost all our factories run on the basics of fragmentation. Fragmenting work and dividing the available resources after finding constraints seem to be our favorite method. The skilled labour keeps on doing the same repetitive work, with no skill being added that may be used in some other operation. Deskilled labour happens a lot due to the fragmentation of operations into minute parts that just involve concentration and persistence rather than work. It might not be of concern to the company, on the outside but this is a factor that we must not overlook. Doing the same operation day and day again, may not be the best way to get old. But the factory would actually prefer the workers to be efficient and perfect at the only operation they do, so that one particular operation is very well known to a set of workers. But what they do not recognize, realize, and remember, is the fact we are limiting the capability and potential of the worker.
It is not impossible to plan accordingly, so as to enable the cyclic change of personnel involved in a process. The factory might have to sacrifice a lot so as to enable timely completion along with the process of having a learning program for the workers. This will initially result in low efficiency, but if handled properly over a suitable period of time, this can be easily handled. The entire factory had this one main advantage. It had enabled all its workers, in a particular department to know what all operations happen in the department. This enabled anyone to work, and fill in for anyone. For example, in the cutting department, while one would be laying fabric one day, she would be checking and bundling the cut pieces, the next day. Although the skilled work was kept apart and was to be done only by the skilled personnel available for it, the factory was a good example of working as an interactive team, rather than working as a team according to a fixed plan. The objective...