Experimental Statistical Output Rate

a rate based on the personal experience of the time study expert and on his evaluation of past records of time actually spent on similar operations during some previous period.

If the established rates are based solely on experience and statistics, no critical analysis of existing organizational and technical operating conditions or of operational methods and practices is made. Thus it becomes impossible to demonstrate what possibilities may exist of utilizing facilities and skilled operators more efficiently. Such rates merely fix an already attained level of labor productivity while providing no incentive to minimize down time and unnecessary costs; they also retard the growth of enhanced labor productivity and delay the introduction of projected measures aimed at intensifying labor and increasing production capacities.

The task of increasing production efficiency in the USSR requires a planned effort aimed at replacing experimental statistical output rates with more progressive, technically substantiated sets of rates. To create a material incentive to workers during the transition to technically substantiated rates, a bonus is paid for meeting or exceeding standard output. Other types of material incentives are also used, such as an increase in piece rates by up to 20 percent where the technically substantiated rates are drawn from sectorial and intersectorial standard data. The rates also apply in machine building and in a number of other sectors of industrial production.