The Psychology of Management by L. M. Gilbreth (latest books to read txt) 📖

suit the purpose for which the measurement is taken. When these subdivisions have been measured, synthesis combines them into a whole. 3 Under Scientific Management, through the measurements used, synthesis is a combination of those elements which are necessary only, and which have been proven to be most efficient. The result of the synthesis is standardized, and used until a more accurate standard displaces it.

Under Scientific Management analysis and synthesis are methods of determining standards from available knowledge. Measurement furnishes the means.

Analyst's Work Is Division. — It is the duty of the analyst to divide the work that he is set to study into the minutest divisions possible. What is possible is determined by the time and money that can be set aside for the investigation.

The Nature of the Work Must Determine the Amount of Analysis Practicable. — In determining the amount of time and money required, it is necessary to consider —

1. the cost of the work if done with no special study.

2. how many times the work is likely to be repeated.

3. how many elements that it contains are likely to be similar to elements in work that has already been studied.

4. how many new elements that it contains are likely to be available in subsequent work.

5. the probable cost of the work after it has been studied —

(a) the cost of doing it.

(b) the cost of the investigation.

6. The loss, if any, from delaying the work until after it has been studied.

7. the availability of trained observers and measurers, analysts and synthesists.

8. the available money for carrying on the investigations.

These questions at least must be answered before it is possible to decide whether study shall be made or not, and to what degree it can be carried.

Cost the Determining Factor. — It is obvious that in all observation in the industrial world cost must be the principal determining feature. Once the cost can be estimated, and the amount of money that can be allowed for the investigation determined, it is possible at least to approximate satisfactory answers to the other questions. How closely the answers approximate depends largely on the skill and experience of the analyst.

The greater number of times the work is to be repeated, the less the ultimate cost. The more elements contained similar to elements already determined, the less the additional cost, and the less the time necessary. The more elements contained that can be used again, even in different work, the less the ultimate cost. The better trained the analyst, the less the immediate or additional cost and time.

Much depends on the amount of previous data at hand when the investigation is being made, and on the skill and speed of the analyst in using these data.

Process of Division Unending. — In practice, the process of division continues as long as it can show itself to be a method for cost reducing. Work may be divided into processes: each process into subdivisions; each subdivision into cycles; each cycle into elements; each element into time units; each time unit into motions, — and so on, indefinitely, toward the "indivisible minimum."4

Measuring May Take Place at Any Stage. — At any of these stages of division the results may be taken as final for the purpose of the study, — and the operations, or final divisions of the work at that stage, may be measured.

To obtain results with the least expenditure of time, the operations must be subjected to motion study before they are timed as well as after. This motion study can be accurate and of permanent value only in so far as the divisions are final. The resulting improved operations are then ready to be timed.

Ultimate Analysis the Field of Psychology. — When the analyst has proceeded as far as he can in dividing the work into prime factors the problem continues in the field of psychology. Here the opportunities for securing further data become almost limitless.

Ultimate Analysis Justifiable. — It is the justification for analysis to approach the ultimate as nearly as possible, that the smaller and more difficult of measurement the division is, the more often it will appear in various combinations of elements. The permanence and exactness of the result vary with the effort for obtaining it.

Qualifications of an Analyst. — To be most successful, an analyst should have ingenuity, patience, and that love of dividing a process into its component parts and studying each separate part that characterizes the analytic mind. The analyst must be capable of doing accurate work, and orderly work.

To get the most pleasure and profit from his work he should realize that his great, underlying purpose is to relieve the worker of unnecessary fatigue, to shorten his work period per day, and to increase the number of his days and years of higher earning power. With this realization will come an added interest in his subject.

Worker Should Understand the Process of Analysis. — It is not enough that the worker should understand the methods of measurement. He can get most from the resultant standards and will most efficiently coöperate if he understands the division into elements to be studied.

Schools Should Provide Training. — Much of the training in analysis in the schools comes at such a late period of the course that the average industrial worker must miss a large part of it. This is a defect in school training that should be remedied. Even very young children soon are capable of, and greatly enjoy, dividing a process into elements. If the worker be taught, in his preparations, and in the work itself, to divide what he does into its elements, he will not only enjoy analysis of his work, but will be able to follow the analysis in his own mind, and to coöperate better in the processes of measurement.

The Synthesist's Work Is Selection and Addition. — The synthesist studies the individual results of the analyst's work, and their inter-relation, and determines which of these should be combined, and in what manner, for the most economic result. His duty is to construct that combination of the elements which will be most efficient.

Importance of Selection Must Be Emphasized. — If synthesis in Scientific Management were nothing more than combining all the elements that result from analysis into a whole, it would be valuable. Any process studied analytically will be performed more intelligently, even if there is no change in the method.

But the most important part of the synthesist's work is the actual elimination of elements which are useless, and the combination of the remaining elements in such a way, or sequence, or schedule, that a far better method than the one analyzed will result.

We may take an example from Bricklaying. 5 In "Stringing Mortar Method, on the Filling Tiers before the Days of the Pack-on-the-Wall-Method" — the division, which was into operations only, showed eighteen operations and eighteen motions for every brick that was laid. Study and synthesis of these elements resulted in a method that required only 1 3/4 motions to lay a brick. Over half the original motions were found to be useless, hence entirely omitted. In several other cases it was found possible to make one motion do work for two or four brick, with the same, or less, fatigue to the worker.

Result Is the Basis for the Task. — The result of synthesis is the basis for the task, — it becomes the standard that shows what has actually been done, and what can be expected to be repeated. It is important to note the relation between the task and synthesis. When it becomes generally understood that the "Task," under Scientific Management is neither an ideal which exists simply in the imagination, nor an impossibly high estimate of what can be expected, — but is actually the sum of observed and timed operations, plus a definite and sufficient percentage of allowance for overcoming the fatigue, — then much objection to it will cease.

General Lack of Knowledge the Chief Cause of Objection to the Task. — As is the case with most objections to Scientific Management, or its elements, ignorance is the chief obstacle to the introduction and success of the Task Idea. This ignorance seems to be more or less prevalent everywhere among managers as well as workers.

Scientific Management can, and does, succeed even when the workers are ignorant of many of its fundamental principles, but it will never make the strides that it should until every man working under it, as well as all outside, understand why it is doing as it does, as well as what is done.

This educational campaign could find no better starting point than the word "task," and the "task idea."

The Name Task Is Unfortunate. 6 — The Century Dictionary defines "Task" as follows:

1. "a tax, an assessment, an impost

2. "labor imposed, especially a definite quantity or amount of labor; work to be done; one's stint; that which duty or necessity imposes; duty or duties collectively

3. "a lesson to be learned; a portion of study imposed by a teacher

4. "work undertaken, — an undertaking

5. "burdensome employment; toil."

Only the fourth meaning, as here given, covers in any way what is meant by the task in Scientific Management.

The ideas included in the other four definitions are most unpleasant. The thought of labor; the thought that the labor is imposed; the thought that the imposition is definite; that duty makes it necessary that it be done; that it is burdensome; that it is toilsome: these are most unfortunate ideas and have been associated with the word so long in the human mind that it will be a matter of years before a new set of associations can be formed which will be pleasant, and which will render the word "task" attractive and agreeable to the worker and to the public in general.

No Other Adequate Word Has Been Suggested. — However, there seems to be no better word forthcoming; therefore, one can but follow the example of the masters in management, who have accepted this word, and have done their best to make it attractive by the way they themselves have used it.

To the writer, the word "stint" is far more attractive and more truly descriptive than is "task." Perhaps because of the old-fashioned idea that a reward, usually immediate, followed the completion of the "stint."

Opinions as to a preferable word will doubtless vary, but it is self-evident that the word "task" has already become so firmly established in Scientific Management that any attempt to change it would result in a confusion. It is far better to concentrate on developing a new set of associations for it in as many minds as possible.

Decided Advantage to the Use of the Word Task. — Perhaps in one way it is fortunate that the use of the word "task" does coincide more or less with the use of that word under Traditional Management. Under Traditional Management the task is the work to be done. It may be just as well that the same word should be used under Scientific Management, in order that both the worker and investigator may realize, that, after all the work that is to be done is, in its essentials, exactly the same. With this realization from the beginning, the mind of the worker or investigator may be the more predisposed to note the eliminations of waste and the cutting down of time, effort and fatigue under the scientifically derived methods.

Definition of Task as Used in Scientific Management. — The task, under Scientific Management, differs from the task under Traditional Management in that —

1. The tools and surrounding conditions with which the work shall be done are standardized.

2. The method in which the work shall be done is prescribed.

3. The time that the work shall take is scientifically determined.

4. An allowance is made for