Under Scientific Management measurement of the worker tells
- what the workers are capable of doing.
- what function it will be best to assign them to and to cultivate in them.
Waste Eliminated by Accurate Measurement. — This accurate measurement increases the worker's efficiency in that it enables him to eliminate waste. "Cut and try" methods are eliminated. There is no need to test a dozen methods, a dozen men, a dozen systems of routing, or various kinds of equipment more than once, — that one time when they are scientifically tried out and measured. This accurate measurement also eliminates disputes between manager and worker as to what the latter's efficiency is.
Efficiency Measured by Time and Motion Study. — Time and Motion Study.
(a) measure the man by his work; that is, by the results of his activities;
(b) measure him by his methods;
(c) measure him by his capacity to learn;
(d) measure him by his capacity to teach.
Now measurement by result alone is very stimulating to increasing activities, especially when it shows, as it does under Scientific Management, the relative results of various people doing the same kind of work. But it does not, itself, show the worker how to obtain greater results without putting on more speed or using up more activities. But when the worker's methods are measured, he begins to see, for himself, exactly why and where he has failed.
Scientific Management provides for him to be taught, and the fact that he sees through the measurements exactly what he needs to be taught will make him glad to have the teacher come and show him how to do better. Through this teaching, its results, and the speed with which the results come, the Page 116 workers and the managers can see how fast the worker is capable of learning, and, at the same time, the worker, the teacher and the managers can see in how far the foreman is capable of instructing.
Final Outcome Beneficial to Managers and Men. — Through measurement in Scientific Management, managers acquire —
- ability to select men, methods, equipment, etc.;
- ability to assign men to the work which they should do, to prescribe the method which they shall use, and to reward them for their output suitably;
- ability to predict. On this ability to predict rests the possibility of making calendars, chronological charts and schedules, and of planning determining sequence of events, etc., which will be discussed at length later.
Ability to predict allows the managers to state "premature truths," which the records show to be truths when the work has been done.