Here are some suggested practices for executing a time study or labor evaluation:

1. Develop a protocol or work instruction and seek review and approval from a few key stakeholders.  Those include professionals with industrial engineering experience, manufacturing, cost accounting, and package engineering responsibilities.

2.  Make sure all of the packaging personnel are trained.  Review/re-read (if needed) the SOP.

3.  Have all of the components readily available; this includes applicable labeling.  If gel packs or dry ice will be used, ensure that they’ve been preconditioned, as required and specified.

4.  Possibly set up a miniproduction line, unless one person packs out the shippers from beginning to end.  I might suggest that a miniproduction line would be more efficient, because if an operator is performing the pack out from beginning to end, they may be taking gloves on and off, doing transactions on a computer, and possibly generating labels.

5.  Test in live conditions.  For example, if they’re in an uncontrolled warehouse in Minneapolis in the winter or Phoenix in the summer, replicate those conditions.

6.  Evaluate several personnel, or a good representative population from the potential operator “pool.”  This may point out those who are really good and efficient and those who require more training.  You generate a bell curve of performance and determine how to optimize or maintain performance excellence.

7.  Perform the evaluation, several times, over the course of a rolling 12 months to determine variations over time and/or possibly adjust the labor standard.  You can set the standard at time “X.” However, a few more data points may compel you to more accurately adjust the labor standard.