Autonomy is like many other Greek words from the beginning. Auto stands for itself and economy of government or order. Autonomy thus means autonomy or discretion.

Autonomy is part of a healthy work environment. To measure the work environment can be a he a qualitative analysis carried out in which 25 standardized questions are asked in the areas of:

• Autonomy
• Supervision Air
• Workplace
• Workload
• Identify with their task (stimulus from the data itself)

In order to create autonomy in the workplace are different methods. Technical autonomy is created by the worker does not syrs of the technical system, machine equipment. Administrative autonomy means that the worker himself, to some degree, determine when and at what rate the work to be performed. It is desirable to have some kind of goal orientation, which means that the worker has a production target to meet the day after which she can go home.

An autonomous working

The figure shows a method for creating autonomy of a conveyor belt, placing the buffers before and after a production section, and a self-directing group. Autonomy at group level can have the same effect as at the individual level of the group's common goals may be consistent with the objectives of all individuals. Achieving it is a matter of good leadership.

Buffer size governs largely autonomy. A social buffer is large and implies that workers have the opportunity to decide when to take a break without affecting other production areas before and after. A technical buffer is smaller and exists to pick up interference on the assembly line needs to stay as a result of defects in quality.

My theory is that the buffers to some extent allows for a balance between autonomy and cost. For large buffers will cost in the form of capital and long lead times. For small buffers costs of lack of autonomy, which many have strong correlation with productivity (see Rubenowitz, 2004).

Cost (# buffers)

There is a difference in how the different production systems have solved the autonomy of the workers. In Sweden, we have almost no intermediate buffers and poor autonomy. In Japan, which are known as autonomous complete process, self-governing complementary process, which involves a number of technical buffers. Alternative mounting, previously applied in Sweden, had no intermediate buffers but instead targeting and long cycle times, which has a similar function as a social buffer.

I believe the number of buffers and the need to create autonomy for the workers is driven by the availability of labor and workforce motivation. Increased labor supply pushes cost (# buffer) curve more toward the origin.