Shop Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor [most important books of all time .txt] 📗

instructor or not, and even although he

may be convinced that he knows a much better way of doing the work. The

first step is for each man to learn to obey the laws as they exist, and

next, if the laws are wrong, to have them reformed in the proper way.

 

In starting to organize even a comparatively small shop, containing say

from 75 to 100 men, it is best to begin by training in the full number

of functional foremen, one for each function, since it must be

remembered that about two out of three of those who are taught this work

either leave of their own accord or prove unsatisfactory; and in

addition, while both the workmen and bosses are adjusting themselves to

their new duties, there are needed fully twice the number of bosses as

are required to carry on the work after it is fully systematized.

 

Unfortunately, there is no means of selecting in advance those out of a

number of candidates for a given work who are likely to prove

successful. Many of those who appear to have all of the desired

qualities, and who talk and appear the best, will turn out utter

failures, while on the other hand, some of the most unlikely men rise to

the top. The fact is that the more attractive qualities of good manners,

education, and even special training and skill, which are more apparent

on the surface, count for less in an executive position than the grit,

determination and bulldog endurance and tenacity that knows no defeat

and comes up smiling to be knocked down over and over again. The two

qualities which count most for success in this kind of executive work

are grit and what may be called “constructive imagination”—the faculty

which enables a man to use the few facts that are stored in his mind in

getting around the obstacles that oppose him, and in building up

something useful in spite of them; and unfortunately, the presence of

these qualities, together with honesty and common sense, can only be

proved through an actual trial at executive work. As we all know,

success at college or in the technical school does not indicate the

presence of these qualities, even though the man may have worked hard.

Mainly, it would seem, because the work of obtaining an education is

principally that of absorption and assimilation; while that of active

practical life is principally the direct reverse, namely, that of giving

out.

 

In selecting men to be tried as foremen, or in fact for any position

throughout the place, from the day laborer up, one of two different

types of men should be chosen, according to the nature of the work to be

done. For one class of work, men should be selected who are too good for

the job; and for the other class of work, men who are barely good

enough.

 

If the work is of a routine nature, in which the same operations are

likely to be done over and over again, with no great variety, and in

which there is no apparent prospect of a radical change being made,

perhaps through a term of years, even though the work itself may be

complicated in its nature, a man should be selected whose abilities are

barely equal to the task. Time and training will fit him for his work,

and since he will be better paid than in the past, and will realize that

he has been given the chance to make his abilities yield him the largest

return—all of the elements for promoting contentment will be present;

and those men who are blessed with cheerful dispositions will become

satisfied and remain so. Of course, a considerable part of mankind is so

born or educated that permanent contentment is out of the question. No

one, however, should be influenced by the discontent of this class.

 

On the other hand, if the work to be done is of great

variety—particularly if improvements in methods are to be

anticipated—throughout the period of active organization the men

engaged in systematizing should be too good for their jobs. For such

work, men should be selected whose mental caliber and attainments will

fit them, ultimately at least, to command higher wages than can be

afforded on the work which they are at. It will prove a wise policy to

promote such men both to better positions and pay, when they have shown

themselves capable of accomplishing results and the opportunity offers.

The results which these high-class men will accomplish, and the

comparatively short time which they will take in organizing, will much

more than pay for the expense and trouble, later on, of training other

men, cheaper and of less capacity, to take their places. In many cases,

however, gang bosses and men will develop faster than new positions open

for them. When this occurs, it will pay employers well to find them

positions in other works, either with better pay, or larger

opportunities; not only as a matter of kindly feeling and generosity

toward their men, but even more with the object of promoting the best

interests of their own establishments. For one man lost in this way,

five will be stimulated to work to the very limit of their abilities,

and will rise ultimately to take the place of the man who has gone, and

the best class of men will apply for work where these methods prevail.

But few employers, however, are sufficiently broad-minded to adopt this

policy. They dread the trouble and temporary inconvenience incident to

training in new men.

 

Mr. James M. Dodge, Chairman of the Board of the Link-Belt Company, is

one of the few men with whom the writer is acquainted who has been led

by his kindly instincts, as well as by a far-sighted policy, to treat

his employees in this way; and this, together with the personal

magnetism and influence which belong to men of his type, has done much

to render his shop one of the model establishments of the country,

certainly as far as the relations of employer and men are concerned. On

the other hand, this policy of promoting men and finding them new

positions has its limits. No worse mistake can be made than that of

allowing an establishment to be looked upon as a training school, to be

used mainly for the education of many of its employees. All employees

should bear in mind that each shop exists, first, last, and all the

time, for the purpose of paying dividends to its owners. They should

have patience, and never lose sight of this fact. And no man should

expect promotion until after he has trained his successor to take his

place. The writer is quite sure that in his own case, as a young man, no

one element was of such assistance to him in obtaining new opportunities

as the practice of invariably training another man to fill his position

before asking for advancement.

 

The first of the functional foremen to be brought into actual contact

with the men should be the inspector; and the whole system of

inspection, with its proper safeguards, should be in smooth and

successful operation before any steps are taken toward stimulating the

men to a larger output; otherwise an increase in quantity will probably

be accompanied by a falling off in quality.

 

Next choose for the application of the two principal functional foremen,

viz., the speed boss and the gang boss, that portion of the work in

which there is the largest need of, and opportunity for, making a gain.

It is of the utmost importance that the first combined application of

time study, slide rules, instruction cards, functional foremanship, and

a premium for a large daily task should prove a success both for the

workmen and for the company, and for this reason a simple class of work

should be chosen for a start. The entire efforts of the new management

should be centered on one point, and continue there until unqualified

success has been attained.

 

When once this gain has been made, a peg should be put in which shall

keep it from sliding back in the least; and it is here that the task

idea with a time limit for each job will be found most useful. Under

ordinary piece work, or the Towne-Halsey plan, the men are likely at any

time to slide back a considerable distance without having it

particularly noticed either by them or the management. With the task

idea, the first falling off is instantly felt by the workman through the

loss of his day’s bonus, or his differential rate, and is thereby also

forcibly brought to the attention of the management.

 

There is one rather natural difficulty which arises when the functional

foremanship is first introduced. Men who were formerly either gang

bosses, or foremen, are usually chosen as functional foremen, and these

men, when they find their duties restricted to their particular

functions, while they formerly were called upon to do everything, at

first feel dissatisfied. They think that their field of usefulness is

being greatly contracted. This is, however, a theoretical difficulty,

which disappears when they really get into the full swing of their new

positions. In fact the new position demands an amount of special

information, forethought, and a clear-cut, definite responsibility that

they have never even approximated in the past, and which is amply

sufficient to keep all of their best faculties and energies alive and

fully occupied. It is the experience of the writer that there is a great

commercial demand for men with this sort of definite knowledge, who are

used to accepting real responsibility and getting results; so that the

training in their new duties renders them more instead of less valuable.

 

As a rule, the writer has found that those who were growling the most,

and were loudest in asserting that they ought to be doing the whole

thing, were only one-half or one-quarter performing their own particular

functions. This desire to do every one’s else work in addition to their

own generally disappears when they are held to strict account in their

particular line, and are given enough work to keep them hustling.

 

There are many people who will disapprove of the whole scheme of a

planning department to do the thinking for the men, as well as a number

of foremen to assist and lead each man in his work, on the ground that

this does not tend to promote independence, self-reliance, and

originality in the individual. Those holding this view, however, must

take exception to the whole trend of modern industrial development; and

it appears to the writer that they overlook the real facts in the case.

 

It is true, for instance, that the planning room, and functional

foremanship, render it possible for an intelligent laborer or helper in

time to do much of the work now done by a machinist. Is not this a good

thing for the laborer and helper? He is given a higher class of work,

which tends to develop him and gives him better wages. In the sympathy

for the machinist the case of the laborer is overlooked. This sympathy

for the machinist is, however, wasted, since the machinist, with the aid

of the new system, will rise to a higher class of work which he was

unable to do in the past, and in addition, divided or functional

foremanship will call for a larger number of men in this class, so that

men, who must otherwise have remained machinists all their lives, will

have the opportunity of rising to a foremanship.

 

The demand for men of originality and brains was never so great as it is

now, and the modern subdivision of labor, instead of dwarfing men,

enables them all along the line to rise to a higher plane