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 Page 129 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.