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

speed with

which the work shall be done that such an amount of bickering,

quarreling, and often hard feeling exists between the two sides.

 

The essence of task management lies in the fact that the control of the

speed problem rests entirely with the management; and, on the other

hand, the true strength of the Towne-Halsey system rests upon the fact

that under it the question of speed is settled entirely by the men

without interference on the part of the management. Thus in both cases,

though from diametrically opposite causes, there is undivided control,

and this is the chief element needed for harmony.

 

The writer has seen many jobs successfully nursed in several of our

large and well managed establishments under these drifting systems, for

a term of ten to fifteen years, at from one-third to one-quarter speed.

The workmen, in the meanwhile, apparently enjoyed the confidence of

their employers, and in many cases the employers not only suspected the

deceit, but felt quite sure of it.

 

The great defect, then, common to all the ordinary systems of management

(including the Towne-Halsey system, the best of this class) is that

their starting-point, their very foundation, rests upon ignorance and

deceit, and that throughout their whole course in the one element which

is most vital both to employer and workmen, namely, the speed at which

work is done, they are allowed to drift instead of being intelligently

directed and controlled.

 

The writer has found, through an experience of thirty years, covering a

large variety in manufactures, as well as in the building trades,

structural and engineering work, that it is not only practicable but

comparatively easy to obtain, through a systematic and scientific time

study, exact information as to how much of any given kind of work either

a first-class or an average man can do in a day, and with this

information as a foundation, he has over and over again seen the fact

demonstrated that workmen of all classes are not only willing, but glad

to give up all idea of soldiering, and devote all of their energies to

turning out the maximum work possible, providing they are sure of a

suitable permanent reward.

 

With accurate time knowledge as a basis, surprisingly large results can

be obtained under any scheme of management from day work up; there is no

question that even ordinary day work resting upon this foundation will

give greater satisfaction than any of the systems in common use,

standing as they do upon soldiering as a basis.

 

To many of the readers of this book both the fundamental objects to be

aimed at, namely, high wages with low labor cost, and the means

advocated by the writer for attaining this end; namely, accurate time

study, will appear so theoretical and so far outside of the range of

their personal observation and experience that it would seem desirable,

before proceeding farther, to give a brief illustration of what has been

accomplished in this line.

 

The writer chooses from among a large variety of trades to which these

principles have been applied, the yard labor handling raw materials in

the works of the Bethlehem Steel Company at South Bethlehem, Pa., not

because the results attained there have been greater than in many other

instances, but because the case is so elementary that the results are

evidently due to no other cause than thorough time study as a basis,

followed by the application of a few simple principles with which all of

us are familiar.

 

In almost all of the other more complicated cases the large increase in

output is due partly to the actual physical changes, either in the

machines or small tools and appliances, which a preliminary time study

almost always shows to be necessary, so that for purposes of

illustration the simple case chosen is the better, although the gain

made in the more complicated cases is none the less legitimately due to

the system.

 

Up to the spring of the year 1899, all of the materials in the yard of

the Bethlehem Steel Company had been handled by gangs of men working by

the day, and under the foremanship of men who had themselves formerly

worked at similar work as laborers. Their management was about as good

as the average of similar work, although it was bad all of the men being

paid the ruling wages of laborers in this section of the country,

namely, $1.15 per day, the only means of encouraging or disciplining

them being either talking to them or discharging them; occasionally,

however, a man was selected from among these men and given a better

class of work with slightly higher wages in some of the companies’

shops, and this had the effect of slightly stimulating them. From four

to six hundred men were employed on this class of work throughout the

year.

 

The work of these men consisted mainly of unloading from railway cars

and shoveling on to piles, and from these piles again loading as

required, the raw materials used in running three blast furnaces and

seven large open-hearth furnaces, such as ore of various kinds, varying

from fine, gravelly ore to that which comes in large lumps, coke,

limestone, special pig, sand, etc., unloading hard and soft coal for

boilers gas-producers, etc., and also for storage and again loading the

stored coal as required for use, loading the pig-iron produced at the

furnaces for shipment, for storage, and for local use, and handling

billets, etc., produced by the rolling mills. The work covered a large

variety as laboring work goes, and it was not usual to keep a man

continuously at the same class of work.

 

Before undertaking the management of these men, the writer was informed

that they were steady workers, but slow and phlegmatic, and that nothing

would induce them to work fast.

 

The first step was to place an intelligent, college-educated man in

charge of progress in this line. This man had not before handled this

class of labor, although he understood managing workmen. He was not

familiar with the methods pursued by the writer, but was soon taught the

art of determining how much work a first-class man can do in a day. This

was done by timing with a stop watch a first-class man while he was

working fast. The best way to do this, in fact almost the only way in

which the timing can be done with certainty, is to divide the man’s work

into its elements and time each element separately. For example, in the

case of a man loading pig-iron on to a car, the elements should be: (a)

picking up the pig from the ground or pile (time in hundredths of a

minute); (b) walking with it on a level (time per foot walked); (c)

walking with it up an incline to car (time per foot walked); (d)

throwing the pig down (time in hundredths of a minute), or laying it on

a pile (time in hundredths of a minute); (e) walking back empty to get a

load (time per foot walked).

 

In case of important elements which were to enter into a number of

rates, a large number of observations were taken when practicable on

different first-class men, and at different times, and they were

averaged.

 

The most difficult elements to time and decide upon in this, as in most

cases, are the percentage of the day required for rest, and the time to

allow for accidental or unavoidable delays.

 

In the case of the yard labor at Bethlehem, each class of work was

studied as above, each element being timed separately, and, in addition,

a record was kept in many cases of the total amount of work done by the

man in a day. The record of the gross work of the man (who is being

timed) is, in most cases, not necessary after the observer is skilled in

his work. As the Bethlehem time observer was new to this work, the gross

time was useful in checking his detailed observations and so gradually

educating him and giving him confidence in the new methods.

 

The writer had so many other duties that his personal help was confined

to teaching the proper methods and approving the details of the various

changes which were in all cases outlined in written reports before being

carried out.

 

As soon as a careful study had been made of the time elements entering

into one class of work, a single first-class workman was picked out and

started on ordinary piece work on this job. His task required him to do

between three and one-half and four times as much work in a day as had

been done in the past on an average.

 

Between twelve and thirteen tons of pig-iron per man had been carried

from a pile on the ground, up an inclined plank, and loaded on to a

gondola car by the average pig-iron handler while working by the day.

The men in doing this work had worked in gangs of from five to twenty

men.

 

The man selected from one of these gangs to make the first start under

the writer’s system was called upon to load on piece work from

forty-five to forty-eight tons (2,240 lbs. each) per day.

 

He regarded this task as an entirely fair one, and earned on an average,

from the start, $1.85 per day, which was 60 per cent more than he had

been paid by the day. This man happened to be considerably lighter than

the average good workman at this class of work. He weighed about 130

pounds. He proved however, to be especially well suited to this job, and

was kept at it steadily throughout the time that the writer was in

Bethlehem, and some years later was still at the same work.

 

Being the first piece work started in the works, it excited considerable

opposition, both on the part of the workmen and of several of the

leading men in the town, their opposition being based mainly on the old

fallacy that if piece work proved successful a great many men would be

thrown out of work, and that thereby not only the workmen but the whole

town would suffer.

 

One after another of the new men who were started singly on this job

were either persuaded or intimidated into giving it up. In many cases

they were given other work by those interested in preventing piece work,

at wages higher than the ruling wages. In the meantime, however, the

first man who started on the work earned steadily $1.85 per day, and

this object lesson gradually wore out the concerted opposition, which

ceased rather suddenly after about two months. From this time on there

was no difficulty in getting plenty of good men who were anxious to

start on piece work, and the difficulty lay in making with sufficient

rapidity the accurate time study of the elementary operations or “unit

times” which forms the foundation of this kind of piece work.

 

Throughout the introduction of piece work, when after a thorough time

study a new section of the work was started, one man only was put on

each new job, and not more than one man was allowed to work at it until

he had demonstrated that the task set was a fair one by earning an

average of $1.85 per day. After a few sections of the work had been

started in this way, the complaint on the part of the better workmen was

that they were not allowed to go on to piece work fast enough. It

required about two years to transfer practically all of the yard labor

from day to piece work. And the larger part of the transfer was made

during the last six months of this time.

 

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