Sunday, November 14, 2021

Introducing Functional Foremanship - F.W. Taylor

The first of the functional foremen to be brought into actual contact with the men should be the inspector; and the whole system of inspection, with its proper safeguards, should be in smooth and successful operation before any steps are taken toward stimulating the men to a larger output; otherwise an increase in quantity will probably be accompanied by a falling off in quality.

Next choose for the application of the two principal functional foremen, viz., the speed boss and the gang boss, that portion of the work in which there is the largest need of, and opportunity for, making a gain. It is of the utmost importance that the first combined application of time study, slide rules, instruction cards, functional foremanship, and a premium for a large daily task should prove a success both for the workmen and for the company, and for this reason a simple class of work should be chosen for a start. The entire efforts of the new management should be centered on one point, and continue there until unqualified success has been attained.

When once this gain has been made, a peg should be put in which shall keep it from sliding back in the least; and it is here that the task idea with a time limit for each job will be found most useful. Under ordinary piece work, or the Towne-Halsey plan, the men are likely at any time to slide back a considerable distance without having it particularly noticed either by them or the management. With the task idea, the first falling off is instantly felt by the workman through the loss of his day's bonus, or his differential rate, and is thereby also forcibly brought to the attention of the management.

There is one rather natural difficulty which arises when the functional foremanship is first introduced. Men who were formerly either gang bosses, or foremen, are usually chosen as functional foremen, and these men, when they find their duties restricted to their particular functions, while they formerly were called upon to do everything, at first feel dissatisfied. They think that their field of usefulness is being greatly contracted. This is, however, a theoretical difficulty, which disappears when they really get into the full swing of their new positions. In fact the new position demands an amount of special information, forethought, and a clear-cut, definite responsibility that they have never even approximated in the past, and which is amply sufficient to keep all of their best faculties and energies alive and fully occupied. It is the experience of the writer that there is a great commercial demand for men with this sort of definite knowledge, who are used to accepting real responsibility and getting results; so that the training in their new duties renders them more instead of less valuable.

As a rule, the writer has found that those who were growling the most, and were loudest in asserting that they ought to be doing the whole thing, were only one-half or one-quarter performing their own particular functions. This desire to do every one's else work in addition to their own generally disappears when they are held to strict account in their particular line, and are given enough work to keep them hustling.

There are many people who will disapprove of the whole scheme of a planning department to do the thinking for the men, as well as a number of foremen to assist and lead each man in his work, on the ground that this does not tend to promote independence, self-reliance, and originality in the individual. Those holding this view, however, must take exception to the whole trend of modern industrial development; and it appears to the writer that they overlook the real facts in the case.

It is true, for instance, that the planning room, and functional foremanship, render it possible for an intelligent laborer or helper in time to do much of the work now done by a machinist. Is not this a good thing for the laborer and helper? He is given a higher class of work, which tends to develop him and gives him better wages. In the sympathy for the machinist the case of the laborer is overlooked. This sympathy for the machinist is, however, wasted, since the machinist, with the aid of the new system, will rise to a higher class of work which he was unable to do in the past, and in addition, divided or functional foremanship will call for a larger number of men in this class, so that men, who must otherwise have remained machinists all their lives, will have the opportunity of rising to a foremanship.

The demand for men of originality and brains was never so great as it is now, and the modern subdivision of labor, instead of dwarfing men, enables them all along the line to rise to a higher plane of efficiency, involving at the same time more brain work and less monotony. The type of man who was formerly a day laborer and digging dirt is now for instance making shoes in a shoe factory. The dirt handling is done by Italians or Hungarians.

After the planning room with functional foremanship has accomplished its most difficult task, of teaching the men how to do a full day's work themselves, and also how to get it out of their machines steadily, then, if desired, the number of non-producers can be diminished, preferably, by giving each type of functional foreman more to do in his specialty; or in the case of a very small shop, by combining two different functions in the same man. The former expedient is, however, much to be preferred to the latter. There need never be any worry about what is to become of those engaged in systematizing after the period of active organization is over. The difficulty will still remain even with functional foremanship, that of getting enough good men to fill the positions, and the demand for competent gang bosses will always be so great that no good boss need look for a job.

Of all the farces in management the greatest is that of an establishment organized along well planned lines, with all of the elements needed for success, and yet which fails to get either output or economy. There must be some man or men present in the organization who will not mistake the form for the essence, and who will have brains enough to find out those of their employees who "get there," and nerve enough to make it unpleasant for those who fail, as well as to reward those who succeed. No system can do away with the need of real men. Both system and good men are needed, and after introducing the best system, success will be in proportion to the ability, consistency, and respected authority of the management.

F.W. Taylor, Shop Management

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