Labor Rate Engineer

The functioning of any manufacturing company assumes that each employee must perform his functions and give certain labor results. The final decisions about what exactly they should be are made by the engineer in the field of labor rationing. In our review, we will dwell in more detail on the features of this profession.

The normalizer engineer is considered one of the core employees of any manufacturing enterprise. He oversees all issues related to compliance with the established time standards for all internal work processes. The duties of a labor rationing inspector include a fairly wide range of a wide variety of functions. This employee forms the current standards of labor costs in the given production conditions for each category of employees. It should be noted that colleagues very often dislike this specialist, but, despite this, he brings a very tangible benefit to the company - it saves costs for the release of products and services.

The rationer often has to deal with issues of reducing the size of wages due to the introduction of advanced scientific and technical innovations, this leads to the fact that individual routine processes become automated and, accordingly, cheaper. This specialist monitors the correct fulfillment of all technical requirements by employees in the provision of services and production of products - it is no secret that many pieceworkers often violate them in order to increase the total output.

It should be noted that a professional approach to work requires a standardization specialist to carry out all the calculations necessary to establish plans for the development of calculations... At the same time, he does this not at all standing over each employee with a stopwatch in his hands - in his work, this engineer uses his own skills and professional experience, therefore the highest requirements are imposed on the knowledge and competencies of this specialist.

Let's start with the pros.

• The demand for the profession. Today, there is a shortage of these specialists on the market, so the demand for professional rate setting engineers remains invariably high.
• Work in a comfortable environment... Unlike many other categories of engineers, this specialist is not directly employed in the production shops; he performs all the necessary calculations at his desk in the office.
• Opportunity for professional growth and development. The fact is that the definition of performance standards for the personnel of an enterprise requires knowledge of a large number of various subtleties and nuances of the production process. Having mastered them in full, the rationer can count on a good career in his industry.

Of the minuses, there is an insufficiently high level of wages. For the overwhelming majority of representatives of this specialty in our country, according to 2019 data, the maximum wage was 30 thousand rubles (data are given on average for Russia).

In accordance with ETKS, in which the professional standard of the normalizer is established, the job descriptions for the main labor duties of this specialist include the following list of works:

• conducting research on the features of the performance of certain labor processes in production, as well as the implementation of basic calculations, on the basis of which technically justified production standards are drawn up for each category of workers;
• calculation of standards time spent on the general production cycle and its individual stages;
• accounting planning use of staff time;
• entering all approved standards into the electronic databases of the company, if necessary - their correction and updating;
• participation in the creation and implementation of a set of measures aimed at optimization of work processes in production;
• identification of internal labor reserves to increase production in different divisions of the company through timekeeping, observation and other research methods;
• identification of the most effective labor methods, planning of measures for their implementation in the company;
• efficiency analysis put forward rationalization proposals in all departments and divisions of both production and administrative blocks;
• when introducing the latest technologies into the production cycle the design engineer must revise the current labor standards and, in accordance with the research data, carry out the main organizational and explanatory measures with the company personnel.

A person who has a higher specialized education, as well as work experience as an inspector for the protection and organization of labor processes for at least 5 years, can be appointed to the position of an engineer for the organization and regulation of labor in a company. Specialists in this field are trained in economics, as well as engineering and economics universities. A college or technical school graduate can also take a corresponding position, but only if his experience in the field of standardization of labor processes is five or more years, in addition, he must undergo mandatory retraining and advanced training courses.

Such stringent requirements are justified, since a huge amount of knowledge is required from the labor rate engineer. The applicant for this vacancy must know the current legislative acts governing the industry in which the production company operates, methodological materials describing the procedure for organizing work processes. These include:

• TCS;
• guidance on the bonus system at the enterprise;
• the procedure for revising existing labor standards;
• the procedure for developing measures aimed at reducing labor costs at the enterprise;
• features of technological processes used in the company;
• established production modes;
• forms of the labor system;
• general principles for the implementation of technical standards;
• current production standards;
• methodology for the study of labor processes;
• types of analysis of the effectiveness of spending time by employees;
• modern computers and computer programs to optimize the work of a rate setting specialist;
• fundamentals of enterprise ergonomics;
• basic principles of company management;
• the current Labor Code of the Russian Federation;
• provision on the peculiarities of the psychology and physiology of labor activity;
• system of requirements for industrial safety.

The engineer-rate setter should be familiar with the positive experience of other companies in terms of work rate setting and the procedure for its payment. It is desirable that he studied not only the experience of Russian enterprises, but also the advanced developments of foreign companies. That is why an inspector for the regulation of labor processes should pay special attention to the continuous improvement of his competence and every 3-5 years, without fail, take refresher courses.

Rationing specialist can work in any industry, whether it be the production of goods, the provision of services, the conduct of research and development or a design office. In fact, this specialist is necessary in any enterprise where a piece-rate system of remuneration has been introduced and the size of the salary directly depends on the volume of work performed. This specialist has a wide range of powers. He can propose his own ideas to the higher management for consideration, related to increasing the efficiency of managing labor resources, awarding bonuses to subordinates, and introducing a system for penalizing labor violators.

The rationer has the right to send requests to any departments of the company to obtain the necessary data in order to draw up adjustments to the current labor standards in the company. Labor Rate Engineer has the right to be knowledgeable in all matters of strategic planning of the company as a whole. At the same time, the responsibility of this employee is extremely high.