Facility Management, Industrial Management

The Application of Efficiency Principles: By George H. Shepard

Name: The Application of Efficiency Principles: By George H. Shepard
Author: Shepard, George Hugh
ISBN: 9781143243356

by Shepard, George Hugh

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This is an OCR edition with typos.
Excerpt from book:
Chapter II PRELIMINARIES. TROUBLES A FOREMAN, who was taking me through a plant where I was investigating the possibilities of increasing efficiency, pointed out to me a piece worker, and remarked, "I have a hard time to keep that fellow from earning two dollars and a half a day." I replied, "It would be altogether better if he did earn two and a half a day wouldn't it?" "Oh, no," replied the foreman. "If he did that, the time clerk would come around and say, 'Gee! That's a lot of money, isn't it?' Then the office would cut the piece rate on that work, and the rest of the men couldn't earn enough and would quit. So, in order to keep from losing the rest of my men, I have to watch him and bother him enough to keep him from earning two and a half a day. If you get a man who will earn too much in spite of all you can do, you just have to fire him." Considering the above incident, we see at once a violation of the principles of— The Fair Deal, Efficiency Reward, Discipline, and Common Sense. Following the line of investigation thus suggested, I found that the management made a regular practice of watching the earnings of its piece workers, and of cutting a rate as soon as any one earned more on it than was considered the proper time rate for his class of labor. In consequence of this, the False Ideal of limitation of production was so general through the plant that superintendents and foremen told their men not to do too much. In fact, due to this cause, production was about thirty per centbelow what it might have been. It is evident that the root of the whole trouble was the violation of the Fair Deal by the management; but the application of the Fair Deal was not the only step necessary for correction. Back of that lay the fact that there were no proper Standards....