Productivity is defined as quantity produced per unit of
input. The input used for calculating productivity could be any factor of production
such as material, equipment, manpower or some combination of different types of factors
of production. But most often productivity refer so productivity of
manpower.
Whether productivity can be improved by
sacrificing will depend on two factors. One, to what extent production can be increased
by sacrificing quality. Also, to the extent reduction in quality will lead to acceptance
of the output produced.
In some cases, minor changes
concessions in quality requirement can result in substantial increase in rate of
production. In other cases this difference may not be much. For example, Take the case
of making packets containing 100 grams of groundnuts. If the the groundnuts have to be
weighed very accurately, the process could be slow. This process can be speeded up
considerably by designing a container of suitable size which will accommodate on average
100 grams of ground nuts. Using the system the rate of packing can be improved
considerably. However this process will involve higher variation in the weight of
groundnuts in each packet.
Coming to the second factor, the
acceptability of the reduced quality level, when increase in production by relaxing
quality is more than offset by reduction in value of out put due to poor quality,
production can be increased by sacrificing quality. Otherwise productivity may actually
decrease. For example, in case of the packets of groundnuts a variation of, say, 2% in
weight of individual packets is not going to reduce the value of packets. It will be
still possible to sell the packets at the designated price of 100 grams packets. But 2%
variation in dimension of precision product would mean production of too many components
that will be unusable and therefore will be rejected. IN a case like this perhaps trying
to increase productivity be relaxing quality will not be a very good
idea.
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