Shop Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor (top books to read .TXT) 📕

drones, who do the loafing and share equally in the profits with the

rest, under cooperation are sure to drag the better men down toward

their level.

“The second and almost equally strong reason for failure lies in the

remoteness of the reward. The average workman (I don’t say all men)

cannot look forward to a profit which is six months or a year away. The

nice time which they are sure to have today, if they take things easily,

proves more attractive than hard work, with a possible reward to be

shared with others six months later.

“Other and formidable difficulties in the path of cooperation are, the

equitable division of the profits, and the fact that, while workmen are

always ready to share the profits, they are neither able nor willing to

share the losses. Further than this, in many cases, it is neither right

nor just that they should share either in the profits or the losses,

since these may be due in great part to causes entirely beyond their

influence or control, and to which they do not contribute.”

Of all the ordinary systems of management in use (in which no accurate

scientific study of the time problem is undertaken, and no carefully

measured tasks are assigned to the men which must be accomplished in a

given time) the best is the plan fundamentally originated by Mr. Henry

R. Towne, and improved and made practical by Mr. F. A. Halsey. This plan

is described in papers read by Mr. Towne before The American Society of

Mechanical Engineers in 1886, and by Mr. Halsey in 1891, and has since

been criticized and ably defended in a series of articles appearing in

the “American Machinist.”

The Towne-Halsey plan consists in recording the quickest time in which a

job has been done, and fixing this as a standard. If the workman

succeeds in doing the job in a shorter time, he is still paid his same

wages per hour for the time he works on the job, and in addition is

given a premium for having worked faster, consisting of from one-quarter

to one-half the difference between the wages earned and the wages

originally paid when the job was done in standard time. Mr. Halsey

recommends the payment of one third of the difference as the best

premium for most cases. The difference between this system and ordinary

piece work is that the workman on piece work gets the whole of the

difference between the actual time of a job and the standard time, while

under the Towne-Halsey plan he gets only a fraction of this difference.

It is not unusual to hear the Towne-Halsey plan referred to as

practically the same as piece work. This is far from the truth, for

while the difference between the two does not appear to a casual

observer to be great, and the general principles of the two seem to be

the same, still we all know that success or failure in many cases hinges

upon small differences.

In the writer’s judgment, the Towne-Halsey plan is a great invention,

and, like many other great inventions, its value lies in its simplicity.

This plan has already been successfully adopted by a large number of

establishments, and has resulted in giving higher wages to many workmen,

accompanied by a lower labor cost to the employer, and at the same time

materially improving their relations by lessening the feeling of

antagonism between the two.

This system is successful because it diminishes soldiering, and this

rests entirely upon the fact that since the workman only receives say

one-third of the increase in pay that he would get under corresponding

conditions on piece work, there is not the same temptation for the

employer to cut prices.

After this system has been in operation for a year or two, if no cuts in

prices have been made, the tendency of the men to soldier on that

portion of the work which is being done under the system is diminished,

although it does not entirely cease. On the other hand, the tendency of

the men to soldier on new work which is started, and on such portions as

are still done on day work, is even greater under the Towne-Halsey plan

than under piece work.

To illustrate: Workmen, like the rest of mankind, are more strongly

influenced by object lessons than by theories. The effect on men of such

an object lesson as the following will be apparent. Suppose that two

men, named respectively Smart and Honest, are at work by the day and

receive the same pay, say 20 cents per hour. Each of these men is given

a new piece of work which could be done in one hour. Smart does his job

in four hours (and it is by no means unusual for men to soldier to this

extent). Honest does his in one and one-half hours.

Now, when these two jobs start on this basis under the Towne-Halsey plan

and are ultimately done in one hour each, Smart receives for his job 20

cents per hour + a premium of 20 cents = a total of 40 cents. Honest

receives for his job 20 cents per hour + a premium of 3 1/8 cents = a

total of 23 1/8 cents.

Most of the men in the shop will follow the example of Smart rather than

that of Honest and will “soldier” to the extent of three or four hundred

per cent if allowed to do so. The Towne-Halsey system shares with

ordinary piece work then, the greatest evil of the latter, namely that

its very foundation rests upon deceit, and under both of these systems

there is necessarily, as we have seen, a great lack of justice and

equality in the starting-point of different jobs.

Some of the rates will have resulted from records obtained when a

first-class man was working close to his maximum speed, while others

will be based on the performance of a poor man at one-third or one

quarter speed.

The injustice of the very foundation of the system is thus forced upon

the workman every day of his life, and no man, however kindly disposed

he may be toward his employer, can fail to resent this and be seriously

influenced by it in his work. These systems are, therefore, of necessity

slow and irregular in their operation in reducing costs. They “drift”

gradually toward an increased output, but under them the attainment of

the maximum output of a first-class man is almost impossible.

Objection has been made to the use of the word “drifting” in this

connection. It is used absolutely without any intention of slurring the

Towne-Halsey system or in the least detracting from its true merit.

It appears to me, however, that “drifting” very accurately describes it,

for the reason that the management, having turned over the entire

control of the speed problem to the men, the latter being influenced by

their prejudices and whims, drift sometimes in one direction and

sometimes in another; but on the whole, sooner or later, under the

stimulus of the premium, move toward a higher rate of speed. This

drifting, accompanied as it is by the irregularity and uncertainty both

as to the final result which will be attained and as to how long it will

take to reach this end, is in marked contrast to the distinct goal which

is always kept in plain sight of both parties under task management, and

the clear-cut directions which leave no doubt as to the means which are

to be employed nor the time in which the work must be done; and these

elements constitute the fundamental difference between the two systems.

Mr. Halsey, in objecting to the use of the word “drifting” as describing

his system, has referred to the use of his system in England in

connection with a “rate-fixing” or planning department, and quotes as

follows from his paper to show that he contemplated control of the speed

of the work by the management:

“On contract work undertaken for the first time the method is the same

except that the premium is based on the estimated time for the execution

of the work.”

In making this claim Mr. Halsey appears to have entirely lost sight of

the real essence of the two plans. It is task management which is in use

in England, not the Towne-Halsey system; and in the above quotation Mr.

Halsey describes not his system but a type of task management, in which

the men are paid a premium for carrying out the directions given them by

the management.

There is no doubt that there is more or less confusion in the minds of

many of those who have read about the task management and the

Towne-Halsey system. This extends also to those who are actually using

and working under these systems. This is practically true in England,

where in some cases task management is actually being used under the

name of the “Premium Plan.” It would therefore seem desirable to

indicate once again and in a little different way the essential

difference between the two.

The one element which the Towne-Halsey system and task management have

in common is that both recognize the all-important fact that workmen

cannot be induced to work extra hard without receiving extra pay. Under

both systems the men who succeed are daily and automatically, as it

were, paid an extra premium. The payment of this daily premium forms

such a characteristic feature in both systems, and so radically

differentiates these systems from those which were in use before, that

people are apt to look upon this one element as the essence of both

systems and so fail to recognize the more important, underlying

principles upon which the success of each of them is based.

In their essence, with the one exception of the payment of a daily

premium, the systems stand at the two opposite extremes in the field of

management; and it is owing to the distinctly radical, though opposite,

positions taken by them that each one owes its success; and it seems to

me a matter of importance that this should be understood. In any

executive work which involves the cooperation of two different men or

parties, where both parties have anything like equal power or voice in

its direction, there is almost sure to be a certain amount of bickering,

quarreling, and vacillation, and the success of the enterprise suffers

accordingly. If, however, either one of the parties has the entire

direction, the enterprise will progress consistently and probably

harmoniously, even although the wrong one of the two parties may be in

control.

Broadly speaking, in the field of management there are two parties—the

superintendents, etc., on one side and the men on the other, and the

main questions at issue are the speed and accuracy with which the work

shall be done. Up to the time that task management was introduced in the

Midvale Steel Works, it can be fairly said that under the old systems of

management the men and the management had about equal weight in deciding

how fast the work should be done. Shop records showing the quickest time

in which each job had been done and more or less shrewd guessing being

the means on which the management depended for bargaining with and

coercing the men; and deliberate soldiering for the purpose of

misinforming the management being the weapon used by the men in

self-defense. Under the old system the incentive was entirely lacking

which is needed to induce men to cooperate heartily with the management

in increasing the speed with which work is turned out. It is chiefly

due, under the old systems, to this divided control of the