"PRODUCTIVITY MEASUREMENT IN MANUFACTURING, IMPACT OF SARS-COV-2 AND RECOVERY TECHNIQUES"

Productivity, generally defined as the ratio between output and inputs, has always been an important topic at industry and national levels. Nowadays, there is a growing interest in studying productivity because, in an economical market environment, it represents a key element to ensure survivability and competitiveness for organisations currently weakened by SARS-CoV-2. Reconfiguring the way of working while observing preventive sanitary measures is a prerogative to address the challenges imposed by the pandemic, finally providing a balance between productivity and safety. For this reason, it has been decided to undertake a thesis project regarding productivity to be able to analyse the impact of SARS-CoV-2 spread in manufacturing productive areas and the implementation of Focus Improvement techniques addressed by simplified logic to recover any loss in productivity. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of productivity with a focus on its management. Productivity is essential in assessing the organisations’ performance therefore the examination of the main internal and external factors influencing productivity growth is carried out. Productivity is not directly observable hence Chapter 2 is devoted to the description of the available measurement techniques. The measurement can be done for a specific industry, a business sector or a country establishing a relation between micro and macro levels of the economy. Five main productivity indicators are identified: value-added based labour productivity, gross-output based labour productivity, value-added based capital productivity, gross-output based multi-factor productivity and value-added based multi-factor productivity. Relying on the individual definitions given to the five productivity indicators listed before, Chapter 3 follows a purely mathematical procedural approach by applying the Törnqvist index method to allow productivity to be measured dynamically in real time both at the industry and at the aggregate levels for each of them. Chapter 4 deals with productivity for finished goods at the industry level for which, starting from the formulae developed in Chapter 3, it is possible to develop five static productivity ratios. These formulae can be also arranged for non-industrial areas e.g. organisations providing services. Chapter 5 illustrates the features and functionalities of discrete-event simulation software and their role in supporting productivity measurement and evaluation in manufacturing companies. Indeed, by inserting the formulae of Chapter 3 into a mathematical model, the obtained results can be used to verify the temporal evolution of productivity growth for both consultative and forecasting purposes. A part from the estimation of performance scores, productivity study concerns also the analysis of the root causes of possible losses hidden in a total industrial cost and of the potential Focused Improvement simplified actions to apply to recuperate them. This is explained in Chapter 6 where the focus is on real case studies to investigate the effects of SARS-CoV-2 on manufacturing industries and the possibility of employing a part of WCM methodologies (Focused Improvement and Workplace Organization supported by ERGO-UAS) to mitigate its negative effects. The final chapter includes the lessons learned from real cases, the proposal for a new productivity cycle from a WCM perspective (7 steps of productivity) and some thought-provoking insights.