Methods-Time Measurement: Plan Work Before Production

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A new assembly is ready for production planning, but nobody has made it often enough to give you a reliable average time. You still need to compare workstation layouts, estimate the workload and decide whether the first orders can fit.

Methods-Time Measurement (MTM) gives you a way to analyse the manual method before regular production begins. Instead of waiting for a history of completed jobs, you build a time from defined movements and established time data. The method comes first: a shorter number is useful only if it describes work people can actually perform safely and correctly.

Once that time is approved for planning, SkyPlanner APS helps you put it to work. Arcturus, its scheduling AI, fits operation durations into the shared production schedule, so a better method becomes a better-informed plan rather than an isolated figure in an engineering file.

What is Methods-Time Measurement?

Methods-Time Measurement is a predetermined motion time system used to describe, analyse and evaluate manual work. An analyst breaks a defined method into movements or process building blocks, applies the relevant time data and rules, and establishes the time for that method at a reference performance level.

In a detailed MTM-1 analysis, movements include reaching, grasping, moving, positioning and releasing. The conditions matter: picking up an easily accessible part is not the same task as selecting and positioning a difficult component. MTM makes those differences explicit rather than hiding them inside one overall estimate.

MTM time values are expressed in time measurement units, or TMU. One TMU equals 0.036 seconds; 1,000 TMU therefore equals 36 seconds. TMU is a time unit, not an efficiency percentage.

The reference performance is also important. MTM does not start by timing your fastest operator and calling that the standard. Its time data already have a defined performance basis. Do not apply a stopwatch performance rating again simply because another study used one.

When should you use MTM rather than another time method?

MTM is particularly useful when the decision concerns the design of manual work: a new product, a changed fixture, a revised material presentation or a choice between two assembly sequences. You can compare the work content before committing to the method.

That does not make it the right answer to every question about time. Choose the evidence that matches the decision:

• MTM: What should this defined manual method require? Useful for designing and comparing work before sufficient production history exists.
• A stopwatch time study: How long do observed elements take under stated conditions, and what justified standard follows? Useful when the operation already exists and can be studied.
• Work sampling: What share of the time is spent on assembly, setup, waiting or other activities? Useful for understanding how a working period is distributed, not for timing every short movement.
• Job-level time tracking: What happened on this actual order or operation? Useful for reviewing production experience and explaining differences from the plan.

These approaches can support one another. An MTM analysis can establish a proposed method time, and subsequent production observations can reveal a missing element or changed condition. But an average of booked hours containing material waits is not the same thing as predetermined manual work content.

For an automatic machine cycle, establish the process-controlled time separately. MTM can describe the operator’s loading, unloading and handling work; it does not turn the machine’s cutting program or curing requirement into a hand movement.

MTM-1, MTM-2 and MTM-UAS: choose the right level

MTM is a family of systems with different levels of detail. The choice affects both what the analysis describes and how much effort it takes to prepare.

MTM-1 works at the basic-motion level. It suits detailed examination of short, repetitive manual work, where individual movement conditions matter to the design.

MTM-2 combines basic motions into larger groups. It offers a less detailed way to analyse suitable work, rather than requiring every MTM-1 movement to be recorded separately.

MTM-UAS, the Universal Analyzing System, uses higher-level process building blocks and is associated with batch-production work. It is not simply another name for MTM-1.

Choose the system with a trained analyst according to the process, its repetition and variation, and the decision the result must support. More detail is worthwhile when it can change that decision. Correct application requires the chosen system’s training, current data and rules; a general guide cannot replace them.

How to turn an MTM analysis into a usable planning time

The useful output is more than a duration. It is a documented method and a time whose meaning the next planner can understand.

1. Define the work and the conditions

Choose the product variant, operation and method revision. Describe the tools, fixture, component presentation, work sequence, quality checks and start and finish events. State whether the analysis covers one piece, one cycle or a batch.

Involve the people who perform or will perform the work. They can identify an awkward reach, a necessary check or a container change that a tidy drawing overlooks. Keep safe handling and product quality in the method; deleting essential work does not create an improvement.

2. Analyse the sequence using the selected system

A trained analyst describes the work using the appropriate building blocks and influencing conditions. The analysis must account for what actually happens, including work performed only at defined intervals.

Follow the system’s rules for sequence and simultaneous activity. Two hands moving at once do not necessarily create two consecutive blocks of elapsed time. Nor should a motion time be invented to fill a gap in an incomplete method description.

Keep setup and recurring work distinguishable. Preparing a fixture once for the batch should not become a preparation task charged to every piece.

3. Compare methods, not just totals

Use the analysis to ask why one method requires less work. Could the component be presented in a consistent orientation? Could a fixture remove repeated repositioning? Does a changed sequence eliminate handling without removing an inspection?

Compare alternatives at the same boundary and quality requirement. A method that seems faster because replenishment or inspection was moved outside the analysis has not necessarily reduced the work. This is where MTM becomes a design tool, rather than a formal-looking estimate.

4. Establish what the released time includes

Check the time basis before calling the result a production standard. Identify recurring support work and the applicable treatment of personal needs, recovery and unavoidable delays. Record which allowances are included and how they are calculated; do not assume a universal percentage.

Keep avoidable interruptions visible as problems to address. A missing-component wait should not quietly become part of every reach-and-grasp sequence. Equally, a planning duration that omits legitimate recurring work will make the new method look easier to schedule than it is.

5. Validate and approve the method for use

Before release, check that the proposed method can be performed with the intended equipment, material presentation and quality requirements. When a pilot or early production run is available, investigate differences against comparable work. Learning, a changed fixture and a missing analysis element need different responses.

Retain the analysis, system used, method revision, assumptions, included allowances, approval and effective date. Revisit the time when the method or its conditions change. The point is not to preserve an impressive number indefinitely, but to preserve a reliable connection between the work and the plan.

Example: a better assembly method does not schedule itself

Imagine a manual assembly station where parts arrive in mixed orientation. The proposed method uses an improved presentation tray and a locating fixture, reducing selection and repositioning. The team checks the method and approves its use.

Suppose the resulting planning time falls from two minutes to one and a half minutes per piece. These are illustrative approved planning inputs, not values taken from an MTM data card. Assume one person works sequentially at one station, with no overlapping machine cycle, and the times and available working calendar have been reconciled for allowances.

For an order of 120 pieces with an unchanged 30-minute setup:

• Previous method: 120 × 2 minutes + 30 minutes = 270 minutes, or four and a half hours.
• New method: 120 × 1.5 minutes + 30 minutes = 210 minutes, or three and a half hours.

The order needs one hour less at this station. That is useful capacity, but it does not automatically make dispatch one hour earlier. The assembly may still wait for a test bench, another order may occupy the next operation, or the released hour may fall outside the window another job needs.

The next decision is therefore not “subtract an hour from the delivery date.” It is “recalculate how this order and the other work fit through the available resources.” That is the calculation SkyPlanner handles for you.

Put approved method times to work with SkyPlanner

SkyPlanner lets you define a process-step duration as time per piece, an output rate or a fixed time. Setting time and teardown are separate inputs. For the all-manual example, the approved per-piece planning duration and the batch setup can therefore remain distinct as order quantities change.

First check what the duration needs to reserve. Human work content, machine occupancy and elapsed operation time are different measures. If a machine runs while its operator prepares another part, adding every activity together can overstate the machine reservation. Using manual work alone can omit the time during which the equipment is unavailable for another job. Map the method to the resources the operation actually needs.

Also reconcile duration allowances with the calendar. A break already removed from available capacity should not be deducted again through an allowance for the same break. Preserve the approved study record while documenting how its components become the planning inputs.

Arcturus schedules those operation durations against configured workstations, shifts, dependencies and priorities. The Gantt timeline shows how the work fits together. When you introduce an approved method change, maintain the affected planning inputs and recalculate the schedule to see its effect on downstream operations and competing orders.

You save the manual work of rebuilding separate queues after each revision. More importantly, you can use a defensible time for a new method in forward planning before a long history of completed jobs exists. You decide which method is approved and which commitments take priority; SkyPlanner calculates the connected schedule.

Later, actual production gives you further evidence. SkyPlanner also supports process-step duration estimates from historical time logs. Keep that source distinct from MTM: one estimates from recorded production, while the other evaluates a defined manual method using predetermined data.

Why the shared schedule matters

UTU, a Finnish manufacturer of electrical switchboards and switchgear, previously planned through department-specific spreadsheets. Changes in the ERP sequence did not always reach the shop floor, and realistic capacity was difficult to see.

With SkyPlanner connected to Oracle NetSuite, UTU brought the Ulvila factory’s lines and departments into one system. Its team reports that an updated work queue reaches installers in seconds, alongside more precise scheduling of project deliveries. The experience illustrates the value of getting the whole workload into a shared plan, rather than leaving each department to reconcile its own queue.

From a credible method time to a credible production plan

Use MTM when you need to design and justify manual work before production history can answer the question. Then choose SkyPlanner when that approved time needs a realistic place in the order book. A sound method tells you what the work requires; finite scheduling shows where and when it can fit.

SkyPlanner integrates with any ERP or MES through its open REST API, so better scheduling can build on your existing production information.

Book a SkyPlanner demo with one approved method time, its operation route and other orders competing for the same capacity. See how a method change affects the production plan and delivery dates, not just one operation’s duration. If you prefer to explore first, try SkyPlanner with demo data or the Assistant’s AI-assisted Getting Started.