In order to promote the leveling up of labor productivity, it is said that a shift from the traditional, seniority-oriented wages into a more functional system of basing wages on the "quality and quantity of labor" is a must. Assuming this is true, problems remain to be solved as to what type of "ability-based wages" should be employed and how. The whole issue deserves stidy in view of the drastic changes which our economy is experiencing today.

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"Humanization of work" is drawing more and more attention of the industrialized societies of the world today. The problem is discussed under the subject of "Quality of Working Life-QWL." In this paper, the nature of the problem is reviewed from the standpoint of industrial engineering and a new concept of job design is discussed as an approach to the problem. Along with the basic concept of job design, the plans which are currently tried out in Japanese industries; namely, "small group activities, " "job enlargement, " "job enrichment, " and "self-management plan, " are outlined. Their limitations so far experienced and future tasks expected in this area are also discussed.

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In the mixed-model assembly line, the work delay inevitably occurs at each station by the reason of the unbalance of the work time for each product. For the purpose of assuring the reliability of the assembly line, we consider how to design adequate buffer capacity to avoid the trouble arising from the work delay. As the first step of the study, we analyze the case in which each worker must process within his own work zone, and propose the procedure of designing float-type buffer capacity.

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In manufacturing problems, it is important to determine the production frequencies and optimum amounts of products that can be manufactured from a given set of facilities. A simple production model is developed for examining several fundamental relationships of a multi-product, multi-facility, lot size scheduling problem, including the time as an explicit parameter. This paper also suggests a method of providing for some criteria to screen the orders which maximize the expected reward from the available capacity of producing standard products.

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We treat the mixed-model assembly line in which each worker except for the first work station is able to process his work out of his own work zone and specify how to design adequate float-type buffer capacity which is able to absorb the trouble arising from the work congestion at each work station. Using a sequencing algorithm to minimize the maximum work congestion, we construct the procedure for desiging buffer capacity and describe a numerical example.

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This article describes the characteristics of the means and variances of the "service intervals" of the clerical unit of the Tandem-single-type and the Tandem-compound-type offices, which consist of a number of office personnel, using I/O Methods for the determination of the number of clerical personnel needed. From the results of the study, it was found that the means and variances of the "service intervals, " which are the means and variances of the output intervals of the clerical unit when the input intervals are zero, are constant even when input clerical unit volume increases, while the means of the service intervals are in inverse proportion to the multiple of the basic unit of the clerical personnel in the offices when the input-clerical-variety ratio is fixed. The "clerical-variety" means the processing of different kinds of forms and records, classified by the differences in the processing methods, work time and preparing time.

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In our recent paper, we found that the several factors were important for group effectiveness and we recognized the need to study the differences of sex. So, in this paper we took up the group effectiveness (satisfaction to task, satisfaction to human relations and the integrated satisfaction). Then, we could obtain new informations concerning the differences and the characteristics of sex.

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This paper is concerned with serveral considerations of criteria for decision making using the pay-off matrix. L. Hurwicz proposed a criterion, which assorts maximin and maximax, for decision making under uncertainty, namely "Generalized maximin". But this criterion takes no account of minimax regret etc., and accordingly it lacks generality. In this paper, "A criterion consisting of four criteria" is proposed, which consists of maximin, maximax, minimax regret and minimum deviation. From the results of this study, it became clear that a criterion, consisting of four criteria, expresses human behaviour more exactly than generalized maximin.

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This paper discusses a design of multi-item production planning rule for the type of system which produces multi-products on a sigle process. It is proposed that a linear combination of the varinaces of working time and stock levels gives a measure of production and inventory activities. The partial derivatives of the objective function with respect to each of production variables are set equal to zero and the set of equtions is solved to decide on the production levels. The derived production planning rule is able to adjust the size of the variances with the linear parameters.

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Assuming the profit to be the unique measure of overall performance of a firm, the paper discusses the necessity of using "opportunity loss" as the performance scale in lieu of traditional "realized versus planned profit difference", and explains profit concepts needed to calculate opportunity losses for departmental performances as well as the total performance of the firm. The concenpts are "ex post optimal" profits for each department and for the firm as a whole. With these concepts are explained the partial opportunity losses for departments against the total opportunity loss for the firm.

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(1) The effectiveness and economical efficiency of computer aided assembly line balancing are discussed on the experiences through many case studies. (2) The desired specification of assembly line balancing programs is described on six items in order to make them practical and useful. (3) The outline and test results of a program developed so as to satisfy such specification are described.

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