For a production operation on a machine tool (say Lathe) what are engineering elements?
Machine
Work holding arrangement
Tool - material
Tool shape
Cutting speed - Spindle speed
Feed
Depth of cut
Measuring gauges
Control levers
Work piece storage location and feeding arrangement.
Finished work piece storage location and dropping arrangement.
Each element has to be analyzed for its impact on productivity.
Analysis is based on principles of laws or on the comparison with available alternatives and benchmark information.
Elemental analysis of shop operations is the basic step in Taylor's productivity improvement system first explained in 1895 through his paper titled as piece rate system. Its fundamental component is elementary rate fixing department. It is the foundation idea for the birth of Industrial Engineering Department.
More Detail about Elemental Analysis of Shop Operations
The most formidable obstacle to productivity is the lack of knowledge on the part of both the men and the management (but chiefly the latter) of the quickest time in which each piece of work can be done ; or, briefly, the lack of accurate time-tables for the work of the place. If the quickest time can be determined and the shop produces at the lower time values, productivity will be high. But it requires finding out the highest cutting speeds, feeds and depth of cut at which machine tools can be run.
The remedy for this obstacle lies in the establishment in every factory of a proper production rate and piece rate-fixing department; a department which shall have equal dignity and command equal respect with the engineering and managing departments, which shall be organized and conducted in an equally scientific and practical manner. Productivity improvement has to be done in a scientific and practical manner. Hence productivity science has to be developed or discovered.
This elementary system of fixing rates has been in successful operation for the past ten years, on work complicated in its nature and covering almost as wide a range of variety as any manufacturing. In 1883, while he was foreman of the machine shop of the Midvale Steel Company of Philadelphia, Taylor conceptualized the system. After practising this method of rate-fixing himself for about a year as well as circumstances would permit, it became evident that the system was a success. Taylor established the rate-fixing department, which has given out piece-work prices in the place ever since.
This department far more than paid for itself from the very start ; but it was several years before the full benefits of the system were felt, owing to the fact that the best methods of making and recording time observations of work done by the men, as well as of determining the maximum capacity of each of the machines in the place, and of making working-tables and time-tables, were not at first adopted.
Before the best results were finally attained in the case of work done by metal-cutting tools, such as lathes, planers, boring mills, etc., a long and expensive series of experiments was made, to determine, formulate, and finally practically apply to each machine the law governing the proper cutting speed of tools, namely, the effect on the cutting speed of altering any one of the following variables : the shape of the tool (i.e., lip angle, clearance angle, and the line of the cutting edge), the duration of the cut, the quality or hardness of the metal being cut, the depth of the cut, and the thickness of the feed or shaving.
While, however, the accurate knowledge of the quickest time in which work can be done, obtained by the rate-fixing department and accepted by the men as standard, is the greatest and most important step toward obtaining the maximum output of the establishment, it is one thing to know how much work can be done in a day and an entirely different matter to get even the best men to work at their fastest speed or anywhere near it.
Of the two devices for increasing the output of a shop, and the scientific rate-fixing department and the differential rate, the work of the scientific rate-fixing department is more important.
The rate-fixing department, for an establishment doing a large variety of work, becomes absolutely indispensable. The longer it is in operation the more necessary it becomes.
Practically, the greatest need felt in an establishment wishing to start a rate-fixing department is the lack of data as to the proper rate of speed at which work should be done.
What is needed is a hand-book on the speed with which work can be done, similar to the elementary engineering hand-books. And the writer ventures to predict that such a book will, before long, be forthcoming. Such a book should describe the best method of making, recording, tabulating, and indexing time-observations, since much time and effort are wasted by the adoption of inferior methods.
The careful study of the capabilities of the machines arid the analysis of the speeds at which they must run, will insure their maximum output. But the study, almost invariably result in first indicating and then correcting the defects in their design and in the method of running and caring for the machines.
In the case of the Midvale Steel Company, the machine shop was equipped with standard tools furnished by the best makers, and the study of these machines, such as lathes, planers, boring mills, etc., which was made in fixing rates, developed the fact that they were none of them designed and speeded so as to cut steel to the best advantage. As a result, this company has demanded alterations from the standard in almost every machine which they have bought during the past eight years. They have themselves been obliged to superintend the design of many special tools which would not have been thought of had it not been for elementary rate-fixing.
But what is perhaps of more importance still, the rate-fixing department has shown the necessity of carefully systematizing all of the small details in the running of each shop, such as the care of belting, the proper shape for cutting tools, and the dressing, grinding, and issuing sairfe, oiling machines, issuing orders for work, obtaining accurate labor and material returns, and a host of other minor methods and processes. These details, which are usually regarded as of comparatively small importance, and many of which are left to the individual judgment of the foreman and workmen, are shown by the rate-fixing department to be of paramount importance in obtaining the maximum output, and to require the most careful and systematic study and attention in order to insure uniformity and a fair and equal chance for each workman. Without this preliminary study and systematizing of details it is impossible to apply successfully increase productivity.
As before stated, the success of this system of productivity improvement depends fundamentally upon the possibility of materially increasing the output per man and per machine
Productivity Management - Dealing with Men: No system of management, however good, should be applied in a wooden way. The proper personal relations should always be maintained between the employers and men ; and even the prejudices of the workmen should be considered in dealing with them.
The employer who goes through his works with kid gloves on, and is never known to dirty his hands or clothes, and who either talks to his men in a condescending or patronizing way, or else not at all, has no chance whatever of ascertaining their real thoughts or feelings.
Above all it is desirable that men should be talked to on their own level by those who are over them.
Each man should be encouraged to discuss any trouble which he may have, either in the works or outside, with those over him. Men would far rather even be blamed by their bosses, especially if the “ tearing out ” has a touch of human nature and feeling in it, than to be passed by day after day without a word and with no more notice than if they were part of the machinery.
The opportunity which each man should have of airing his mind freely and having it out with his employers, is a safety-valve ; and if the superintendents are reasonable men, and listen to and treat with respect what their men have to say, there is absolutely no reason for labor conflicts and strikes.
It is not the large charities (however generous they may be) that are needed or appreciated by workmen, such as the founding of libraries and starting workingmen’s clubs, so much as small acts of personal kindness and sympathy, which establish a bond of friendly feeling between them and their employers.
Source:
Frederick Taylor's Productivity Improvement System 1895 - Part 1
https://nraoiekc.blogspot.com/2018/07/frederick-taylors-piece-rate-system.html
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