•FPDat II onboard computers provided reliable estimates of productive time.•FPDat II ignition and motion data not sufficiently reliable to track delay-free work time.•Pre-processing of FPDat II data ...needed to reduce errors in production estimates.•Productive time estimates can support development of automated production analyses.
The digital transformation of the forest sector has been supported by the development of data loggers and onboard computers, which enable remote monitoring of forest operations, including ground-based whole-tree harvesting systems. Among the available options, FPDat II and its preceding versions represent a common brand-agnostic solution, particularly in Canada. Despite their widespread use, there remains a gap in the literature and industry knowledge regarding their efficacy and accuracy of production monitoring. To partially address this gap, this study developed an innovative protocol to estimate direct work time and productive time, utilizing FPDat II ignition and motion data, and validated its performance. The accuracy of these estimates was assessed by comparing over 400 h of direct timing through field observations with remotely collected ignition and motion data of 11 different machines. The study further identified data processing strategies to minimize errors in these estimates. Although the results showed poor performance in the estimation of direct work time, the inclusion of time thresholds in the analysis of ignition and motion data enabled a reduction of the overall productive time error to less than 1%. This result was achieved by classifying ignition-off events shorter than one hour and working events shorter than one minute as delays. The ability to successfully track productive time of ground-based harvesting equipment, including equipment used for whole-tree applications, opens up further opportunities in the development of fully automated productivity analysis solutions.
Productivity is one of the keys to determining the factors that affect competitiveness in construction projects, including the productivity of workers and heavy equipment for spillway casting work at ...Dam Development. The aim of the research is to analyze productivity and factors affecting heavy equipment and workers. This research using quantitative descriptive calculation methods, and observation in field time study. The results of the data calculations show that the productivity value of a concrete pump is 167.491 m3/day, the productivity of mixer trucks is 46.305 m3/day/unit, and the productivity of workers is 13.790 m3/day/person. Factors that affect heavy equipment productivity are weather, work time efficiency, and material or payload. As well as factors that affect worker productivity, there are the weather, worker time efficiency, foundry location, and the number of workers.
Organizational change research has concentrated on the challenges of implementing isolated changes, paying little attention to the interactions among concurrent change initiatives. Our longitudinal ...real-time study of a multinational technology firm examines how two corporate change initiatives interfered with each other. The interfering initiatives provoked inconsistency judgments (cognitive, normative, and procedural) and the emergence of collective emotions that undermined change performance. Top managers' responses fueled the sharing of inconsistency judgments and emotions that fed into a recursive process that, over time, provoked emotional uncertainty, elicited moral emotions, and eroded emotional attachment to change. Our process model reveals inconsistency judgments as a previously overlooked socio-psychological mechanism underpinning interferences between change initiatives. We reveal the limitations of examining organizational change in terms of isolated initiatives and call for research that considers the dynamics between change initiatives.
The objective of this research is to evaluate the quality of restaurant services of Manabí, a local offer of Ecuador; as a basis for systematic improvement. Through a descriptive, non-experimental ...and cross-sectional study; Difference 5 of the Servqual Model was contextualized, adding the aspects of convenience of schedules, attractiveness and understanding of the menu, value for money; among others; which integrated with improvement tools through time study, constitutes the main contribution of the study. Its application in two Manabí restaurants allowed the validation of the usefulness of the proposed instrument for the evaluation and improvement of the quality of restaurants in the Manabí context. In the case of a traditional restaurant, a reduction in service times was achieved by determining effective service standards during peak hours; In the modern one, the need for differentiation strategies based on age is established.
The effects of different temporal structures among actors in interorganizational projects can be hugely consequential, especially for large societal projects. By applying a temporal translation view ...to a real-time study of an interorganizational project, we studied the influence of differences between such structures during the collaboration. We found that the three participating organizations, having distinctly different temporal structures, adopted different modes of translation, which we identified as integrative, adaptive and transformative. These different modes of translation affected dramatically how the project unfolded, as they impacted differently the time and effort required to adapt to common schedules and deadlines. Our study contributes a processual extension of entrainment theory by shedding light on entrainment as ongoing accomplishment enabled by a translation view. It also contributes to a processual understanding of the temporality of interorganizational projects.
Due to socioeconomic transformations in the 20th century, Quercus pyrenaica Willd. coppices in Spain, as well as other European coppices, have experimented an abandonment and lack of intervention ...leading to stagnant high density stands with fragile health due to competition. Thinnings are often required to ensure their stability and health, producing forest products such as firewood or biomass, which are key energy sources in a carbon-neutral economy. However, thinnings are seldom performed because they lack economic sustainability due to a low productivity, high costs and low biomass prices. In this study, two thinning methods, selective thinning (ST) and boom-corridor thinning (BCT), were tested carrying out a time study in a high-density small-diameter Q. pyrenaica stand in the León province (Castilla y León, Spain) with a forest harvester base machine, on which an accumulating felling head Bracke C16c was mounted. The residual stands were significantly different regarding the final density (greater in BCT) and the final average DBH (bigger in ST), while thinning intensity (odt·ha-1) was the same. In most work elements, time per tree was not significantly different. BCT showed a significant 48.6% increase in harvester productivity when compared to ST, with averaging 4.43 and 2.99 odt·pmh-1, respectively, due mainly to the average weight per extracted tree, 42% greater in BCT. When considering the common range of unit tree weight, the productivity was 16–23% greater for BCT, far less than observed in the trials. These results show the potential of BCT over ST in the studied conditions, although there is room for improvement. Further studies could include the future evolution of the treated stands and perform a cost analysis.
Purpose This study developed new measures of the routine and non-routine task contents of managerial, professional, technical, and clerical occupations from a workload perspective. Here, we present a ...comparative analysis of the workload structures of state and industrial sector employees. Design/methodology/approach Our method involves detailed descriptions of work processes and an element-wise time study. We collected and analysed data to obtain a workload structure that falls within three conceptual task categories: (i) non-routine analytic tasks, (ii) non-routine interactive tasks and (iii) routine cognitive tasks. A total of 2,312 state and industrial sector employees in Kazakhstan participated in the study. The data were collected using a proprietary web application that resembles a timesheet. Findings The study results are consistent with the general trend reported by previous studies: the higher the job level, the lower the occupation’s routine task content. In addition, the routine cognitive task contents of managerial, professional, technical, and clerical occupations in the industrial sector are higher than those in local governments. The work of women is also more routinary than that of men. Finally, vthe routine cognitive task contents of occupations in administrative units are higher than those of occupations in substantive units. Originality/value Our study sought to address the challenges of using the task-based approach associated with measuring tasks by introducing a new measurement framework. The main advantage of our task measures is a direct approach to assessing workloads consisting of routine tasks, which allows for an accurate estimation of potential staff reductions due to the automation of work processes.
Prior tree marking is used to guide loggers or forest machine operators on which trees to cut to achieve the desirable silvicultural quality of a thinning treatment. In the future, this beneficial ...but expensive human work could be automated with advanced driver assistance systems. This study aimed to investigate the effect of conventional prior tree marking on cutting productivity and harvesting quality of the first and later thinnings. A comparative time study was conducted with four experienced harvester operators. The operators thinned 4825 stems with the cut-to-length (CTL) harvesting method in eight thinning stands. The time consumption of the different time elements of cutting work was measured to model the cutting productivity with average values or regress these values against the stem volume or density of removal. Prior tree marking increased the cutting productivity by an average of 2.8% in the first thinnings and 2.7% in later thinnings by reducing the time consumption of boom-out (positioning the harvester head for cut) and moving. The operator effect was notable, even though only experienced operators participated in the study. For some operators, prior tree marking did not make cutting work more efficient, and sometimes hampered it. Prior tree marking improved the quality of the remaining stands in thinnings by producing a more accurate density of remaining trees after the harvesting operation in relation to thinning guidelines. When the stands were not marked, the operators chose trees of poor quality with almost the same accuracy as the forester. These findings lay the foundation for the next-generation operators' guidance and decision support systems, which could detect trees around the harvester and guide the operator in tree selection and managing better thinning intensity in cutting work. Although prior tree marking increased productivity only marginally, the improvement in the quality of harvesting operations must be acknowledged.
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