Nowadays, companies have great demand to measure the standard
time of the products that they produce to compete effectively. It
is not possible to be consistent and efficient primarily in preparing
manufacturing plans and programs, short and long term forecasts,
cost control, pricing and the other technical and managerial activities
in a company with a time estimation that is not based on the standard
time. On the other hand, despite many condensation studies, it is
clear that there is not a cost effective method or tool that can measure
the standard time. It is possible to say that the above mentioned
reality is the core difficulty in the application of time studies.
Time study (TS) records the process time and levels of a predetermined
work using specified conditions. The collected data is
analyzed and used to identify the time required to finish the work
with a defined process speed. Unfortunately, TS is cost ineffective
and can be applied only under some specific conditions. Moreover,
it depends on the experience of the person performing the TS.
The problems encountered in determining the standard time
brings the need for alternative work measurement methods in
addition to the direct measurement techniques such as TS. These
alternative methods are classified to be indirect work measurement