Shaving Seconds to Trim Labor Costs

Vanessa O'Connell writes in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that companies such as grocery store chain Meijer are scrutinizing employees more closely than ever to try to cut labor costs:

Daniel A. Gunther has good reason to keep his checkout line moving at the Meijer Inc. store north of Detroit. A clock starts ticking the instant he scans a customer's first item, and it doesn't shut off until his register spits out a receipt.

To assess his efficiency, the store's computer takes into account everything from the kinds of merchandise he's bagging to how his customers are paying. Each week, he gets scored. If he falls below 95% of the baseline score too many times, the 185-store megastore chain, based in Walker, Mich., is likely to bounce him to a lower-paying job, or fire him.

...

The brains behind Meijer's system is a consulting and software company known for decades as H.B. Maynard & Co., which last year became the Operations Workforce Optimization unit of Accenture Ltd. Borrowing from time-motion concepts first developed for U.S. steel mills and factory floors [remember Taylorism, anyone?], it breaks down tasks such as working a cash register into quantifiable units and devises standard times to complete them, called "engineered labor standards." Then it writes software to help clients keep watch over their work forces.

For more, see Stores Count Seconds to Trim Labor Costs.  Hat tip:  Dennis Nolan.

rb