http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/137545797

The National Shipbuilding Research Program. 1989 Ship Production Symposium, Paper No. 7: The Evolution of Generating of Methods and Standards in U.S. Naval Shipyards

The Production Industrial Engineering Resource System (PIERS) is an automated system to improve industrial engineering. One of its components is Computer Aided Time Standards (CATS), a computer-assisted method to find, manipulate and store standard time data and existing standards to create new standards (1). CATS provides immediate, user-friendly access to the over 15,000 elements of standard time data and standards published by all shipyards. The system evolved from the DoD Computer Aided Time Standards program to collect, validate and publish standard time data in a single source for use by all DoD work measurement organizations. CATS uses menus, prompts, and instructions displayed on the screen to first direct the user to appropriate standard time data or standards and then to lead the user through the process of constructing a new standard. Because CATS performs the required mathematical computations, many hours of tedious manual labor have been replaced with a few keystrokes. One of the keys to CATS' flexibility and usefulness is its modular design. The system now includes many time-saving software packages, and additional packages can be made part of the system quickly and inexpensively. CATS has demonstrated a cost savings and positive return on investment of 3.5:1 (2). With strong management support, the use of computer systems similar to PIERS can significantly improve the bottom lines of other organizations.

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