A study was conducted to investigate the influence of different approaches to arranging the pace and temporal organization of repetitive assembly and disassembly tasks on variability in performance, and to compare assembly and disassembly times derived with psychophysical methods to more traditional Methods- Time Measurement (MTM) approaches. The conditions studied were a traditional assembly line arrangement where assemblies were started at a pace of 110 MTM, a batch condition where subjects were required to complete 36 assemblies in the amount of time based on 110 MTM, a line condition where subjects were required to take a break after every 6 assemblies requiring theffi to work at a 120 MTM pace, and a psychophysical condition where subjects were allowed to choose their pace.

Overall, the results suggest that the mean times spent working remained fairly constant a cross conditions, with more variation in pauses in between cycles. For the second self-paced condition, subjects selected a significantly higher pace than 1 10 MTM, which was the basis for the other conditions. The higher pace was achieved through reduction in mean pauses, and the potential implications for musculoskeletal risk are discussed.