Quality Control Measurement of an Engineering Productivity Index.

In the business community, it has become critical that companies know how productive their engineers are. Organizations find it very difficult to measure the productivity of their knowledge workers (e.g., engineers) because their work output is cognitive. Because the nature of the work is “thinking” or “knowledge application,” which brings important ideas and breakthroughs to organizations, this challenging task must be undertaken. Quality control (QC) charts were used to measure cognitive indexes of a group of knowledge workers, working engineers. These statistical process control charts measured previously developed cognitive indexes. The QC chart components were created from a representative group of working engineers, and then another sample of engineers were tracked over time for out-of-control run patterns. The results indicate that the cognitive behavior index would show out-of-control patterns for low productivity engineers. Substantial performance improvements are possible for engineers, resulting in cost savings from reduced negative turnover and lowered productivity giving better returns on engineering salaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]