Search

Contains history, case studies, and discussion of the use and benefits of flex-time employment, a pattern of working hours in which individual employees begin and end their work day at times of their choice, within certain limits, as long as they work a prescribed number of hours. The paper addresses the following topics: (1) What is flex-time, (2) variations on the flex-time theme, (3) where flex-time began--and why, (4) flex-time system spreads, (5) flex-time crosses the ocean, (6) capsule comments from flex-time users, (7) flex-time and overtime, (8) flex-time and exempt status employees, (9) flex-time and individual efficiency, (10) flexibility of flexible work schedules, (11) variety of flex-time at Control Data Corporation, (12) flex-time problems--that needn't be, (13) benefits of flex-time for employees, (14) benefits for management, (15) flex-time and the energy crisis, (16) disadvantages of flex-time for employees, (17) disadvantages for management, (18) flex-time and you, (19) case histories of flex-time at Samsonite Corporation and Scott Paper Company, and (20) prognosis for flex-time. (WL)

The minimum wage, through the lens of its effects, is constantly under the scrutiny of the authorities, employers and employees. The paper analyzes how certain endogenous (specific to each state) and exogenous factors (such as the implementation of the Directive on ensuring adequate wages for workers in the Union) influence minimum wage policies and their evolution over time. This article explores the impact of the minimum wage from economic and social perspectives, mainly in terms of the labour market and poverty. The arguments for or against certain aspects of the minimum wage support the conclusions of the article reinforcing the idea of the need for the existence of an adequate minimum wage and reveal that, depending on the criteria considered for adoption and the way of implementation, it can be one of the most effective tools for intervention on the labour market and for protecting employees with incomes located at the bottom of the income pyramid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cost and time are some of the factors that significantly influence the course of a construction project. The longer the project runs, the project costs can be greater than the planned costs. One way to optimize the budget implementation of a project is the crashing method. This paper aims to determine the cost and schedule after the crashing method is carried out. The case study was selected from a local road rehabilitation project in the Tanjung Uncang area of Batam, Indonesia. The simulation overtime of 2 hours/day and an additional worker of 20%. The simulation results with overtime can be completed 18.89% faster, while with additional workers, it can be 14.44% faster. The additional costs incurred by crashing the overtime program are 2.04%, while for additional workers, there is a decrease of 0.28%. In making decisions on crashing programs, one must pay attention to the availability of funds, field conditions, and the availability of labor at the project site. Quality targets cannot be sacrificed for reasons of acceleration of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workstation arrangement is one of the factors that can give a significant impact on the company's performance. Poor implementation of the workstation can lead to an ineffective and inefficient work system which may limit the rate of productivity, poor utilization of resources, high rate of rejection, and many more. For the company of this study, which is XYZ Furniture Sdn Bhd, they face limited production over a certain period by using existing machines which can make the production rate become inefficient. Thus, this study is conducted to solve the problem by proposing several solutions to the company. Based on the findings obtained from this method, the researchers found that there are some shortcomings in the workstation layout that has been used in the factory that causes them to be unable to maximize daily production and cause them losses due to having to work overtime to ensure their daily targets are achieved. The use of this ARENA simulation method is important because this application can create an overview of the movement of a process with more organized and accurate simulation results. Thus, this study is conducted to solve the problem by proposing several solutions to the company. Based on the result, there was a positive increase of 34 units of wood pieces equivalent to 7.08%. This improvement is very good and gives a considerable impact on the company and can help the company in growing its business in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research studies a monthly task assignment for staff and testing equipment of a stability testing process in a pharmaceutical company. A stability testing process begins with collecting drug to the system, preparing chemical, glassware and equipment, testing drugs on equipment and writing reports. There are three types of a stability test where each drug requires different type of stability test, and some drugs require multiple types. Each testing process requires different types of testing equipment, which requires different set-up time and processing time. Currently, task assignments are determined based upon division manager's experience which leads to unbalanced workload. To solve this problem, a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) is proposed to find the optimal solution, which focuses on minimizing the difference between maximum and minimum workload of staff, overtime, and penalty cost of postponement. The result of this model shows that the unbalanced workload among staff is reduced. Moreover, by test postponement, overtime does not occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims to understand how collected data from the Assembly Wire Bond manufacturing line and enterprise systems can lead to insights regarding the relationship of overtime rate to manufacturing KPIs: output attainment, utilization, and absenteeism. Using CRISP-DM as the data mining methodology, approximately 3.8 million records for attendance, 25.7 million for lot transactions, and 546.2 million for machine utilization were extracted, transformed, and summarized into weekly buckets, resulting in three hundred fifteen (315) samples from the five (5) selected packages, representing 97% of the total volume. The samples were subjected to Multiple Linear Regression and Pearson Correlation to determine whether there was a significant relationship between Overtime Rate and the manufacturing KPIs. Results show that Overtime Rate exhibits a statistically significant relationship with all the variables (P < 0.05) for the overall setup. Violations of the regression assumptions are probably due to model misspecification: other variables can more effectively explain the behavior of the overtime rate, as indicated by the low R-squared values. In contrast, only selected variables are considered significant across the results by package. These differences can be attributed to the different environmental conditions of semiconductor processes and manufacturing lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haulage Industry has implemented the Terms and Condition (T & C) of services on drop trailer method (DTM) for prime movers and trailers. Haulage tariff is the condition of service used to charge for their operations and deliveries. The standard charges that stated in the terms and conditions consists of the haulage rates, trailer, detention charges, driver overtimes, Fuel Adjustment Factor (FAF), toll charges and other matters requested by their customers. The terms and conditions of services are to address on DTM issues such as maximize trailers' utilization. The T&C is an important mechanism to ensure that users uphold the contract as stipulated in the T&C towards the requests made. The hauliers are concerned on their trailers' utilization, hence the implementation of T & C will be effective and benefiting from the reduction of lost times and costs. It also improves the deployments towards better managing of the trailers' detention in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research was conducted in a manufacturing company that produces high carbon wire. The company had issues in fulfilling demand where it had to work on overtime despite having a production capacity that is greater than the number of requests. This problem are due to greater actual production time than the standard production time and job scheduling prioritization using first come first serve. The purpose of this study is to create a job schedule using a bat algorithm in hybrid flow shop for high carbon wire products to minimize makespan and hence, to reduce overtime. In this study, a comparison was made between 4 conditions, namely one condition using time and sequence of work based on production reports (condition 1), second condition using actual time and sequence of work based on bat algorithm (condition 2), third condition using standard processing time and sequence of work based on production reports (condition 3), and forth condition using standard time and sequence of work based on bat algorithm (condition 4). Post data processing, we found that the condition 1 has a makespan of 551 hours and requires 82 hours of overtime; condition 2 has a makespan is 545 hours and requires 76 hours overtime; condition 3 has a makespan is 478 hours and requires 9 hours overtime; and condition 4 has a makespan is 439 hours and does not require any overtime 4. By using bat algorithm and standard processing time, the company can eliminate overtime and reduce makespan by 112 hours from condition 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hospitalization expenses account for a high rate of national medical care expenditure in Japan. The Japanese national medical care expenditure was 42 trillion 364.4 billion yen in 2015, in which hospitalization expenses were 15 trillion 575.2 billion yen (36. 8%). Therefore, it is necessary to take measures to reduce hospitalization expenses. The total ratio of the labor cost of physicians and nurses accounted for about 1/3 of all expenditures of general hospitals in 2015. Moreover, the personnel cost of nurses accounted for about 1/5 of all expenditure, showing that the personnel cost of nurses is an element with a large influence on hospital management. The objective of this study was to develop a methodology to reduce the overtime work of nurses accounting for a large rate of personnel expenses by focusing on overtime work, a personnel expense-increasing factor, aiming at hospital cost reduction. First, the cause of overtime work, planning, and recording by nurses were analyzed and an IT application increasing the quality and efficiency of the work was developed. Then, fees for the use and maintenance of the IT system meeting the following conditions were set as a strategy to introduce the system: (1) 50% reduction of the overtime work of nurses and (2) fees 50% or lower than the reduced payment for overtime work. This IT application was introduced to the heads and directors of nursing of 5 hospitals and the strategy was proposed. All heads and directors highly evaluated the system and responded to initiate the process for the introduction. It was suggested that the methodology to reduce the overtime work of nurses proposed by this study is useful and feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overtime was indicated that warehouse management neither inefficient and ineffective. The case study taken place in Indonesia popular cement board finished goods warehouse. The objectives of this study are to reduce overtime, by re-layout of warehouse finished goods using integrated methods. The integrated of Class-Based Storage Method, Dedicated Storage Policy, From-to-Chart Method for layout improvement and Tibrewala, Philippe, and Browne Algorithm for scheduling warehouse operators. The results of relayout the finished goods warehouse are obtained that the space efficiency and the reduction of cycle time from 3,33 minutes to 1,86 minutes and the overtime hours decreased after partial implementation. The result obtained for the new labor scheduling of warehouse operator is needed to reduce 2 operators. The proposed improvement will continue to be applied and it is expected to increase efficiency in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the link between media stereotypes of older and younger workers and workplace age discrimination. It traces overtime effects on behavioral outcomes of workers. It states that workers' age-related media stereotypes an issue that is generally neglected both in the field of gerontology and organizational studies, and intergenerational communication.

Production scheduling affects the cost of production. Hence, it is one of the important problems for operational problems. Especially for productions that require assembly precedencies, an inappropriate production schedule may be the reason for overtime decisions for a finite planning period. An inappropriate production schedule may lead to tardiness in assembly jobs as subassembly parts may not be ready on time. To meet the deadline of products, tardiness must be compensated using overtime. In this study, we considered an assembly job shop scheduling problem for multigroup jobs with sub-assembly precedence's from a real-world application. Our aim is to determine the production schedule that minimizes overtime for a finite planning time interval. We developed a mixed integer programming model that minimizes the overtime complying with the delivery dates for the problem. We conducted a case-study on a construction machinery industry in Thailand. Construction machines have several welded body parts with subassembly processes. Welded body parts with sub-assembly processes have cutting, bending, machining and prewelding processes. The readiness of the welded body parts before the machine assembly is critically important for the continuity of the machine assembly line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delays often occur in real-world software development projects and may cause significant monetary penalties to software companies. Meanwhile, industry lessons have shown that adding inexperienced employees would cause further delays due to the learning curve and communication overhead. However, if employees with same or similar skills and domain knowledge can be rescheduled from other concurrent projects to help with the delayed projects, it may be possible to reduce or even eliminate delay penalties without requesting extra employees. Here, the big challenge is how to conduct employee rescheduling without having employees working overtime, which is an NP hard problem in nature. To address such a problem, this paper proposes a novel employee rescheduling strategy based on improved ant colony optimization algorithm. Specifically, three generic rules are proposed to improve the effectiveness in generating valid solutions. Preliminary results on benchmark projects show that our strategy can achieve much better effectiveness than its genetic algorithm based counterpart in reducing the overall delay penalty of multiple software projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers a staffing problem at a local hospital. The managers consider they are understaffed and try to overwhelm the staffing deficit problem through overtime, rather than hiring additional nurses. However, the huge amount of allocated budget for overtime becomes a concern and needs some assessment, analysis and justification. The current hospital estimates suggests that the shortage at the hospital level corresponds to 300 full time equivalent (FTE) nurses, but the deficit is not basedon deep scientific approach. This paper deals with staffing model that provides the required scientific evidence on the deficit level. It also gives the accurate information on the overtime components. As a results, the suggested staffing model shows that some nursing units are unnecessarily overstaffed. Moreover, the current study reveals that the real deficit is of only215 FTEresulting in a potential saving of 28%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance measurement systems (PMSs) in a manufacturing company are very complex and comprehensive including with many tangible and intangible factors. In order to achieve competitive advantage in nowadays' global environment manufacturers have to implement PMSs which have to be suitable for enterprises' strategic targets. Initially, a firm operating in industry has to assess it's own weak and strong points very seriously in different dimensions. Evaluating manufacturing performance includes many individual judments of the managers who have different assessment of each other. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate manufacturing performance of a Turkish textile company via multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) in fuzzy environment. We propose a model to help the manufacturers for the manufacturing performance evaluation and for assessing weak and strong points of their firms based on fuzzy Choquet integral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aggregate planning (AP) is a crucial step of the production planning procedure. It is the process by which a company determines optimal levels of capacity, production, subcontracting, and inventory for its long term planning. This paper presents a comparative analysis related to the impact of social and economic factors on building reliable aggregate plans for companies operating in an international framework. The comparison is carried out between facilities of an international cement company, located in two different countries, a developing country and a developed one, namely Morocco and Belgium. The comparison is based on their aggregate planning and computational results based on profitability are analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the extent to which contracted working hours (running from part-time to full-time hourly employment) are associated with unpaid overtime in Britain. It uses the authoritative British dataset Workplace Employment Relations Survey (2004) to derive a sample of 4,828 employees, from 735 workplace establishments, who reported working unpaid overtime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have recently documented important changes in the hours that individuals and families spend at work and the time of day when they do that work. In this paper we assess the health implications of these emerging patterns in the organization of work time. Using 1996-2004 data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLS79), we investigate the effect of work time on six health outcomes at age 40. Our simple bivariate models show that part-time workers are consistently linked to worse health and that night and variable hours workers also report more health penalties. At the same time, part-time workers are less likely to be obese as compared to full-time and overtime workers. We find that the patterns in the bivariate model are partly accounted for by social structure: socio-demographic characteristics, family, and work environment. When we introduce these controls, a small negative effect of overtime work appears. When further controlling for the presence of prior health problems, we find that negative health associations for part-time and irregular work hours disappear, suggesting that a selection process contributes to those differences in health. The association between hours, shift, and obesity persists even when accounting for these spurious relationships and reciprocal effects, suggesting that works schedules have an impact on preventive health behaviors such as sleep and exercise. Our findings highlight the methodological challenges of studying work-time and health relationships, and explain inconsistencies in prior research on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This purpose of this paper is to create a better understanding of the way in which overwork is created and extended in American society. It is exploratory in nature, and will help to start analyzing how overwork takes place for different types of workers. Its focus is mainly on how the mechanisms and motivations interact with each other in order to create different overwork conditions for different types of workers. Mechanisms are defined as the pressures exogenous to workers that force them to work longer hours. Motivations are the endogenous feelings and desires of workers that make the tolerance or even embracement of such overwork condition. The data used here is gathered from a sample of 13 respondents who were involved in different types of work with different types of pay. With this information and the review of literature on this particular subject 5 different models were created in order to visualize the interaction between mechanisms and motivations for different types of workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the sociology of time has focused on quantitative studies of the number of hours devoted to various activities. Our paper takes a different approach, looking at one part of the politics of time. We develop a framework for examining contests concerning how many hours employees will engage in paid labor, and especially whether they will work overtime or extended hours. This process operates at the level of the state through debates over laws and regulations. It operates at the level of the organization?through negotiations between employers and unions. It operates at the level of the worksite, with workers complying or resisting demands from supervisors and co-workers. And it operates at the level of gender and the family, as spouses and children encourage or discourage workers from putting in additional hours. We report on preliminary in-depth interviews with nurses, utility maintenance workers, and engineers at one hospital and one nuclear power plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effect of working overtime on feelings of time-pressure, work-home interference and overstrain. Furthermore, the article focuses on the question if the different mechanisms that lead to working overtime can at the same time compensate or aggravate its consequences. To answer this question I used the Time-Competition Survey 2002/2003, a survey among 1114 employees of 30 organizations in the Netherlands. From this data-set 885 employees are selected. The results show that an increase in overtime causes an increase in problems related to time-pressure, work-home interference and overstrain. If the employee enjoys his work or if he feels enthusiastic about it (work-is-hobby mechanism), this appears to compensate the negative consequences of working overtime. Financial rewards for working overtime (work-is-money mechanism) do not compensate the negative consequences of working overtime. Employees who work in a situation with high work pressure and unpredictable work (crisis mechanism) or a situation in which working overtime enhances career-opportunities (time-competition mechanism) experience a relatively high level of time-pressure, work-home interference and overstrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the gendered effects of leave-taking on wages over time. Classical human capital theory suggests and research indicates that wages decrease as time spent out of the labor market increases. This study employs longitudinal data from the NLSY (1979-1998), organized into a pooled cross-section time series. OLS and fixed effects regression models are compared, and using a partial-adjustment differential equation model based on fixed effects estimates, changes in wage trajectories over time are estimated as a function of human capital, marital and family status, and tenure on the job. While women experience greater job interruptions, results suggest that men incur larger wage penalties associated with taking leave, although there is evidence of negative selection into leave-taking among men. While it is normative for women to take time off from work to care for family needs, men's leave-taking may be more scrutinized by employers as a violation of gendered expectations in the workplace, and they suffer larger wage penalties as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excessive work hours can be detrimental to workers and their families, thus it is important to understand how long work hours are generated within a variety of contexts. Recent studies focus on professional and managerial employees. In contrast, this paper explores the meanings of overtime among a blue-collar, manufacturing workforce at an auto parts plant in the U.S. manufacturing Midwest. Maximizing income is a powerful incentive for workers at the plant to accept and seek overtime work. Yet, we argue that interests in income maximization present only one cultural "face" of overtime. In addition, working overtime is embedded within meaningful social relations in the plant and offers workers an opportunity to transgress the status order outside of the factory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Improvements in formal educational attainment is being used as a key tool in reducing inequalities and encouraging household welfare in post-war Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan civil war lasted nearly 20 years from 1983 to 2009. But does historical evidence suggest that education has been significant in reducing income poverty specially in the poorer quintiles? To answer this question, this paper looks at whether increases in household level education overtime has reduced household income poverty during the 1990-2013 period across the welfare distribution. Methodology: The paper uses data from 5 cross section data sets conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics (Household Income Expenditure Surveys) for 1990/91, 1995/6, 2001/2, 2005/6 and 2012/13 to estimate the impact of household education on various household level indicators for welfare (household level consumption) and poverty (head count, poverty gap and severity) using quantile regression analysis. We account for the endogeneity of schooling using instrumental variable estimation and the uncensored version of the new censored quantile instrumental variable (CQIV) estimator developed in Chernozhukov, Fernandez-Val and Kowalski (2015). The instruments we use exploit the 'Free education policy' implemented in 1945 and the liberalisation of the economy 1978 that increased substantially employment opportunities within and outside the country (Atukorale and Jayasuriya 1994, Hettige 2005). The former policy change is expected to have encouraged schooling substantially by reducing costs of schooling while the latter discouraged schooling as it increased the opportunity cost of schooling. Findings and implications: The results show that an extra year of schooling can increases welfare by 3.8 per cent on average. However, the impact varies considerably across the welfare distribution: At the 20th and 25th quantiles an extra year of education tends to increase welfare by 6 and 5 per cent, respectively, while at the median it is around 3.5 per cent. At the 90th it is much less, at 1 per cent. Thus although the marginal effect of schooling on welfare is significant and positive at all levels of the welfare distribution, the highest impact is on the lower and middle quartiles. We find similar results across the various indicators for poverty that we use. We interpret this as providing strong support for post-war efforts in expanding and deepening education provision and access, both to enhance welfare and to reduce inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though overtime working has long been blamed for deteriorating innovation, few studies demonstrated the relationship. The paper argues that overtime working can promote innovation performance in the certain condition and to some extent. We use the knowledge-based view to establish our arguments theoretically, and analyzed ambidextrous effects on innovation performance using a time-lagged quantitative dataset from 309 firms. The study starts from how to manage overtime to facilitate the positive effects on innovation. Next, we suggest how to reduce overtime working with building trust climates in the organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing research shows that overtime is associated with a number of negative outcomes for employee well-being, especially a number of health outcomes. Using the employee-organization framework and building on prior research, this paper examines both employees' health and non-health responses to overtime. Moreover, it assesses if employee responses differ depending on whether or not employees are paid for overtime, and depending on whether or not employees have flexibility in their working time and work location. Analysis of a large sample of over 30,000 European employees drawn from the European Working Conditions Surveys in 2005 and 2010 shows that employee overtime is positively associated with stress and emotional work, and negatively associated with satisfaction. Moreover, the negative response of emotional work is somewhat reduced, while the positive response of satisfaction is enhanced, for employees who are paid for working overtime. Finally, for employees who have more flexibility in their working time and work location, negative responses to overtime are attenuated and positive responses enhanced. The findings suggest that overtime work has both health- and non-health-related effects and these are in turn moderated by overtime pay and flexibility in working time and location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite three decades of scholarship on economic restructuring in the US, employers' violations of minimum wage, overtime, and other workplace laws remain understudied and undertheorized. This article begins to fill the gap by presenting evidence from a large-scale, original worker survey that draws on recent advances in sampling methodology to reach vulnerable populations such as undocumented workers. Our findings suggest that in America's three largest cities, violations of employment and labor laws are pervasive across low-wage industries, impacting a wide range of workers. We argue that violations are an empirical manifestation of "unregulated work" and differentiate that term from related concepts of the informal economy and nonstandard work. We conclude by proposing that employers' evasion and violation of labor regulations need to be understood as key business strategies shaping work and opportunity in the 21st century labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]