Shop Management - Frederick Winslow Taylor (top 10 non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗
- Author: Frederick Winslow Taylor
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specified time (according to the system employed); and further, when
necessary, refers them by name to the man who will give them especial
directions. This instruction card is filled in by one or more members of
the planning department, according to the nature and complication of the
instructions, and bears the same relation to the planning room that the
drawing does to the drafting room. The man who sends it into the shop
and who, in case difficulties are met with in carrying out the
instructions, sees that the proper man sweeps these difficulties away,
is called the instruction card foreman.
Time and Cost Clerk. This man sends to the men through the “time ticket”
all the information they need for recording their time and the cost of
the work, and secures proper returns from them. He refers these for
entry to the cost and time record clerks in the planning room.
Shop Disciplinarian. In case of insubordination or impudence, repeated
failure to do their duty, lateness or unexcused absence, the shop
disciplinarian takes the workman or bosses in hand and applies the
proper remedy. He sees that a complete record of each man’s virtues and
defects is kept. This man should also have much to do with readjusting
the wages of the workmen. At the very least, he should invariably be
consulted before any change is made. One of his important functions
should be that of peace-maker.
Thus, under functional foremanship, we see that the work which, under
the military type of organization, was done by the single gang boss, is
subdivided among eight men: (1) route clerks, (2) instruction card
clerks, (3) cost and time clerks, who plan and give directions from the
planning room; (4) gang bosses, (5) speed bosses, (6) inspectors, (7)
repair bosses, who show the men how to carry out their instructions, and
see that the work is done at the proper speed; and (8) the shop
disciplinarian, who performs this function for the entire establishment.
The greatest good resulting from this change is that it becomes possible
in a comparatively short time to train bosses who can really and fully
perform the functions demanded of them, while under the old system it
took years to train men who were after all able to thoroughly perform
only a portion of their duties. A glance at the nine qualities needed
for a well rounded man and then at the duties of these functional
foremen will show that each of these men requires but a limited number
of the nine qualities in order to successfully fill his position; and
that the special knowledge which he must acquire forms only a small part
of that needed by the old style gang boss. The writer has seen men taken
(some of them from the ranks of the workmen, others from the old style
bosses and others from among the graduates of industrial schools,
technical schools and colleges) and trained to become efficient
functional foremen in from six to eighteen months. Thus it becomes
possible with functional foremanship to thoroughly and completely equip
even a new company starting on a large scale with competent officers in
a reasonable time, which is entirely out of the question under the old
system. Another great advantage resulting from functional or divided
foremanship is that it becomes entirely practicable to apply the four
leading principles of management to the bosses as well as to the
workmen. Each foreman can have a task assigned him which is so
accurately measured that he will be kept fully occupied and still will
daily be able to perform his entire function. This renders it possible
to pay him high wages when he is successful by giving him a premium
similar to that offered the men and leave him with low pay when he
fails.
The full possibilities of functional foremanship, however, will not have
been realized until almost all of the machines in the shop are run by
men who are of smaller calibre and attainments, and who are therefore
cheaper than those required under the old system. The adoption of
standard tools, appliances, and methods throughout the shop, the
planning done in the planning room and the detailed instructions sent
them from this department, added to the direct help received from the
four executive bosses, permit the use of comparatively cheap men even on
complicated work. Of the men in the machine shop of the Bethlehem Steel
Company engaged in running the roughing machines, and who were working
under the bonus system when the writer left them, about 95 per cent were
handy men trained up from laborers. And on the finishing machines,
working on bonus, about 25 per cent were handy men.
To fully understand the importance of the work which was being done by
these former laborers, it must be borne in mind that a considerable part
of their work was very large and expensive. The forgings which they were
engaged in roughing and finishing weighed frequently many tons. Of
course they were paid more than laborer’s wages, though not as much as
skilled machinists. The work in this shop was most miscellaneous in its
nature.
Functional foremanship is already in limited use in many of the best
managed shops. A number of managers have seen the practical good that
arises from allowing two or three men especially trained in their
particular lines to deal directly with the men instead of at second hand
through the old style gang boss as a mouthpiece. So deep rooted,
however, is the conviction that the very foundation of management rests
in the military type as represented by the principle that no workman can
work under two bosses at the same time, that all of the managers who are
making limited use of the functional plan seem to feel it necessary to
apologize for or explain away their use of it; as not really in this
particular case being a violation of that principle. The writer has
never yet found one, except among the works which he had assisted in
organizing, who came out squarely and acknowledged that he was using
functional foremanship because it was the right principle.
The writer introduced five of the elements of functional foremanship
into the management of the small machine shop of the Midvale Steel
Company of Philadelphia while he was foreman of that shop in 1882-1883:
(1) the instruction card clerk, (2) the time clerk, (3) the inspector,
(4) the gang boss, and (5) the shop disciplinarian. Each of these
functional foremen dealt directly with the workmen instead of giving
their orders through the gang boss. The dealings of the instruction card
clerk and time clerk with the workmen were mostly in writing, and the
writer himself performed the functions of shop disciplinarian, so that
it was not until he introduced the inspector, with orders to go straight
to the men instead of to the gang boss, that he appreciated the
desirability of functional foremanship as a distinct principle in
management. The prepossession in favor of the military type was so
strong with the managers and owners of Midvale that it was not until
years after functional foremanship was in continual use in this shop
that he dared to advocate it to his superior officers as the correct
principle.
Until very recently in his organization of works he has found it best to
first introduce five or six of the elements of functional foremanship
quietly, and get them running smoothly in a shop before calling
attention to the principle involved. When the time for this announcement
comes, it invariably acts as the proverbial red rag on the bull. It was
some years later that the writer subdivided the duties of the “old gang
boss” who spent his whole time with the men into the four functions of
(1) speed boss, (2) repair boss, (3) inspector, and (4) gang boss, and
it is the introduction of these four shop bosses directly helping the
men (particularly that of the speed boss) in place of the single old
boss, that has produced the greatest improvement in the shop.
When functional foremanship is introduced in a large shop, it is
desirable that all of the bosses who are performing the same function
should have their own foreman over them; for instance, the speed bosses
should have a speed foreman over them, the gang bosses, a head gang
boss; the inspectors, a chief inspector, etc., etc. The functions of
these over-foremen are twofold. The first part of their work is to teach
each of the bosses under them the exact nature of his duties, and at the
start, also to nerve and brace them up to the point of insisting that
the workmen shall carry out the orders exactly as specified on the
instruction cards. This is a difficult task at first, as the workmen
have been accustomed for years to do the details of the work to suit
themselves, and many of them are intimate friends of the bosses and
believe they know quite as much about their business as the latter. The
second function of the over-foreman is to smooth out the difficulties
which arise between the different types of bosses who in turn directly
help the men. The speed boss, for instance, always follows after the
gang boss on any particular job in taking charge of the workmen. In this
way their respective duties come in contact edgeways, as it were, for a
short time, and at the start there is sure to be more or less friction
between the two. If two of these bosses meet with a difficulty which
they cannot settle, they send for their respective over-foremen, who are
usually able to straighten it out. In case the latter are unable to
agree on the remedy, the case is referred by them to the assistant
superintendent, whose duties, for a certain time at least, may consist
largely in arbitrating such difficulties and thus establishing the
unwritten code of laws by which the shop is governed. This serves as one
example of what is called the “exception principle” in management, which
is referred to later.
Before leaving this portion of the subject the writer wishes to call
attention to the analogy which functional foremanship bears to the
management of a large, up-to-date school. In such a school the children
are each day successively taken in hand by one teacher after another who
is trained in his particular specialty, and they are in many cases
disciplined by a man particularly trained in this function. The old
style, one teacher to a class plan is entirely out of date.
The writer has found that better results are attained by placing the
planning department in one office, situated, of course, as close to the
center of the shop or shops as practicable, rather than by locating its
members in different places according to their duties. This department
performs more or less the functions of a clearing house. In doing their
various duties, its members must exchange information frequently, and
since they send their orders to and receive their returns from the men
in the shop, principally in writing, simplicity calls for the use, when
possible, of a single piece of paper for each job for conveying the
instructions of the different members of the planning room to the men
and another similar paper for receiving the returns from the men to the
department. Writing out these orders and acting promptly on receipt of
the returns and recording same requires the members of the department to
be close together. The large machine shop of the Bethlehem Steel Company
was more than a quarter of a mile long, and this was successfully run
from a single planning room situated close to it. The manager,
superintendent, and their assistants should, of course, have their
offices adjacent to the planning room and, if practicable,
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