STANDARD ELEMENTS SERVE AS MEMORY DRILLS.--This use of
standardized elements makes the time elapsing between repetitions
shorter, for, while it may be a long time before the worker again
encounters the identical work or method, still, the fact that
elements are standard means that he will have occasion to repeat
elements frequently, and that his memory will each time be further
drilled by these repetitions.
GANG INSTRUCTION CARD AN AID TO MEMORY.--The gang instruction
card has been used with good effect at the beginning of unfamiliar
repetitive cycles of work to train the memory of whole gangs of men
at once, and to cut down the elapsed time from the time when one
man's operation is sufficiently completed to permit the next man to
commence his. It has been found, in the case of setting timbers in
mill construction for example, that to have one man call out the
next act in the sequence as fast as the preceding one is finished,
until all have committed the sequence to memory, will materially
decrease the time necessary for the entire sequence of elements in a
cycle of work.
INDIVIDUAL INSTRUCTION CARD AN INANIMATE MEMORY.--The
instruction card supplies a most accurate memory in inanimate form,
that neither blurs nor distorts with age.
The ranter against this standard memory is no more sensible than
a man who would advocate the worker's forgetting the result of his
best experience, that his mind might be periodically exercised by
rediscovering the method of least waste anew with each problem.
Other things being equal, that worker has the longest number of
years of earning power who remembers the largest number of right
methods; or at least remembers where to find them described in
detail; and, conversely, those who have no memory, and know not
where to look for or to lay their hand on the method of least waste,
remain at the beginning of their industrial education. "Experience,"
from an earning standpoint, does not exist when the mind does not
retain a memory of the method. The instruction card, then, acts as a
form of transferable memory--it conserves memory. Once it is made,
it furnishes the earning power without the necessity of the former
experience having been had more than once.
Plans, details, free-hand sketches, and two-dimension
photographs surpass the highest form of mental imagery, and such
cultivated imagery is undoubtedly a high achievement. There is no
kind of memory, visualization, nor constructive imagination that can
equal the stereoscopic or three-dimension photographs that may
accompany the instruction card for enabling the worker to "see the
completed work before it is begun." Probably the greatest hindrance
to development of lower forms of animal life is their inability to
picture past experiences, and the reason for the intellectual
strides made by the worker under Scientific Management is the
development of this faculty.
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