Differences between worker pairs in manual assembly: a case study

Abstract Working in pairs is common and often necessary to carry out industrial manual assembly tasks. This paper studies differences in performance that can occur between pairs of workers. Within a case assembly product, activity analysis for each worker in a total of ten pairs and up to four repetitions (learning) is conducted on the basis of video evidence. The results show significant variation in assembly time between the pairs. Repetitions reduce the relative variation, while the ranking of the pairs remains mostly unchanged. In general, the time used for installing parts explain most of the variation between the pairs.