To get the most pleasure and profit from his work he should
realize that his great, underlying purpose 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 cooeperate if he understands the division into elements
to be studied.
SCHOOLS SHOULD PROVIDE TRAINING.--Much of the training in
analysis in the schools comes at such a late period of the course
that the average industrial worker must miss a large part of it.
This is a defect in school training that should be remedied. Even
very young children soon are capable of, and greatly enjoy, dividing
a process into elements. If the worker be taught, in his
preparations, and in the work itself, to divide what he does into
its elements, he will not only enjoy analysis of his work, but will
be able to follow the analysis in his own mind, and to cooeperate
better in the processes of measurement.
THE SYNTHESIST'S WORK IS SELECTION AND ADDITION.--The synthesist
studies the individual results of the analyst's work, and their
inter-relation, and determines which of these should be combined,
and in what manner, for the most economic result. His duty is to
construct that combination of the elements which will be most
efficient.
IMPORTANCE OF SELECTION MUST BE EMPHASIZED.--If synthesis in
Scientific Management were nothing more than combining all the
elements that result from analysis into a whole, it would be
valuable. Any process studied analytically will be performed more
intelligently, even if there is no change in the method.
But the most important part of the synthesist's work is the
actual elimination of elements which are useless, and the combination
of the remaining elements in such a way, or sequence, or schedule,
that a far better method than the one analyzed will result.
We may take an example from Bricklaying.[5] In "Stringing
Mortar Method, on the Filling Tiers before the Days of the
Pack-on-the-Wall-Method"--the division, which was into operations
only, showed eighteen operations and eighteen motions for every
brick that was laid. Study and synthesis of these elements resulted
in a method that required only 1 3/4 motions to lay a brick. Over
half the original motions were found to be useless, hence entirely
omitted. In several other cases it was found possible to make one
motion do work for two or four brick, with the same, or less,
fatigue to the worker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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