(
Harrington Emerson - The Twelve Principles of Efficiency)
HUMMING birds winter in Central America and nest in summer in Alaska, yet bring up families as beautiful, as courageous and as achieving as themselves. The stormy petrel flies four hundred miles
through the fog and strikes its burrow exactly, storks marked in Norway have been caught in
South Africa, curlew and plover are supposed to fly at the rate of four miles a minute.
The barn-yard fowl, if frightened, runs and flutters over a low fence, and panting with ex-
haustion is soon run down. The rooster uses his wings to flap when he crows, the hen uses
hers to brood her chicks, their ancestors having forgotten that they were birds and that the
limitless air was their inheritance.
''Whoever heard of a woman tiring when she was having a good time, even if she had danced
all night?" said Nietzsche, and the police in San Francisco on March 20, 1910, on advice of
doctors present, stopped a dance after six of the contestants had been dancing 15 hours and
6 minutes.
Prof. William James pointed out and insistedon the second wind, the ability that comes after
first fatigue, after the barn-yard flutter, to en-dure and achieve, to fly !
Standards and Schedules ! These are of two kinds, the physical and chemical standards dis-
covered and established in the last century, standards and schedules as exact as mathe-
matics, and those other schedules resting on standards whose upper limit we do not yet
know. We have our five senses. We can taste or smell an infinitesimal taint in food, we can
smell the millionth part of a grain of musk, we can discern by touch the ten-thousandth part
of an inch, a man heard 2,390 miles away the boom of the explosion of Krakatoa, we see bil-
lions and billions of miles distant a new star bursting into brilliance; but there is a region
not ten miles away about which we know less than we know of the nebulae, because we can-
not reach it with our senses, nor yet with our physics and mathematics — a region ten miles
or less straight down under foot.
By bringing into play our instruments, our bolometers which measure the millionth of a
degree of heat, our ultra-microscope which al-most enables us to see the atoms, one one-mil-
lionth of a second measured on the tracing of a tuning fork's vibrations — by the refinements of
physics and chemistry we can peer into the true inwardness of material things ; so we use stop
watches for time and motion studies of our ma-chines ; but when we wish to schedule work f 01
sentient beings, then our mathematics fail and we fall back on experiments inspired by faith.
Four miles a minute the flight of a little bird, 99 per cent and more the efficiency of the fire-
fly's flight, the sixth sense of the blinded bat, the sudden stop of the grizzly bear from full
trot in darkest night when he was within a foot of the finest flower wire leading to a flash-light
camera !
All around us, everywhere nature has been showing us that increased result comes from
lessened effort, not from greater effort, but we have been too stupid to understand. Because it
takes one pound of coal to produce one horse power, and two pounds of coal to produce two
horse power, because it is harder to jump over a fence four feet high than over a fence two feet
high, because it is more difficult to jump over a fence five feet high, we have non-reasoned back
from results to effort, and concluded that effort should be gauged by result which is in accord
with one set of experiences but wholly contrary to the larger experience. Any specific kind of
effort, measured by results, falls from a max-imum to a minimum and then rises again to
another maximum, so that there is only one point where maximum result is attained for
minimum effort, a point properly scheduled at 100 per cent.
As to specific result it may be attained in many ways. Tame geese in Germany are slowly
driven to market in September, waddling a few miles each day. They are prepared for the trip
by walking through soft, warm tar and then through fine gravel and sand, so that, thus shod,
their feet may stand the weary march. Wild geese fly from Golofnin Bay, Alaska, to the
tropics in less time than the tame geese waddle a hundred miles. The wild goose's distance and
time schedule would be ridiculous for the tame goose, the latter's schedule an absurdity not less
cruel for the wild geese.
As to the variation in effort for similar con-ditions, we have but to remember that while it
is pleasant to spend from six to twelve hours in bed, it is an affliction to spend all one's time in
bed, a greater affliction than to have no bed and to snatch rest as one can on a long tramp or
journey, for men can sleep even when walking. It is easy to walk three or four miles an hour ;
it is intensely wearying to stand waiting or to walk two miles an hour, when shopping with
one's wife — more wearying than the five-mile an hour trot of the Yukon winter trail. It is easy
to ride a bicycle 10 to 15 miles an hour, it is desperately hard to ride 1 mile an hour or 20
miles an hour, and either endeavor will send the rider exhausted to bed. How much more ex-
hausting it is to breathe either fast or slow than to breathe naturally, the latter being abso-
lutely effortless and kept up from birth to death, waking or sleeping. Natural breathing,
natural heart beats, natural temperature, are 100 per cent efficiency.
This law of the reduction of effort for greater results crops up in the most unexpected places, so that engineers have evolved the definite critical speed, the speed of maximum result for relatively least expenditure.
In fast steamers resistance does not increase with the cube of the speed, but there are certain
higher critical speeds at which resistance is less. Nearly 100 years ago in England a man
running express-passenger canal boats had them towed by galloping horses at a speed of
nearly 14 miles an hour, claiming this was easier than a slower speed. He was ridiculed
by scientists who opposed the law of cubic in-crease of resistance. A bet was made, dyna-
mometers attached, and up to 8 miles the law held good ; but above 8 miles the canal boat be-
gan to climb out of the water, so that at 14 miles the actual resistance was small. This
was the origin of the hydroplane boat. A wise Kansas mare hitched to a plow, pulling heavily,
would look back, take in the situation, and in-crease her speed. The plow immediately pulled
easier because the greater speed flung the cling-ing earth free of the mold board, thus greatly
lessening friction.
Time and motion studies having been made as to all the work of a gang of men, both conditions and operations were standardized and an efficiency reward was offered. The results are shown in the diagram opposite. Nearly all the men are grouped between 80 per cent and 120 per cent, with the greatest density around 120 per cent — the region of least effort. The hardest worked man both physically per unit of time and physically per unit of result, was Poder, with an efficiency of 7.8 per cent. He was more exhausted at the month's end than Harris, who attained 139.2 per cent; Keief, King, and Clohessy were more tired at the day's end than Boyce and Hauf ; Magill was as tired as Hauf.
A casual observation of the passengers leaving the Atlantic Highland boats at the Rector Street pier in New York on a Monday morning in summer, shows conclusively that in the crowd, some (a very few) travel over the long gallery from boat to street at the rate of 6 miles an hour; others, quite a bunch, at the rate of 4 miles ; but the great body travels at the rate of 3 miles, and there are stragglers, mothers with little children, old ladies of social weight, also lingering lovers, who travel at rates shrinking to 2 miles an hour. The able-bodied, in so far as not hindered, have an average rate of 4 miles; and from these observations of voluntary effort, we can well establish a walking standard of 4 miles an hour with disapprobation if the rate falls below 3 miles, with special reward to those who reach and pass the 4-mile mark. Had we diagrammed these walkers on the pier, they wouJd have given us a picture similar, to the machine-shop curve of Poder to Harris. Both diagram and description show that the increase of effort between 100 per cent and 140 per cent efficiency is very slight — only 25 per cent, quite within the limit of normal variation above the rational average; and it also shows how it is possible for a good man to deliver nearly twenty times as much as the incompetent man, four times as much as the laggards, twice as much as the haphazard workers. Poder, Keief, King and Clohessy could never become Hauf , Boyce,
and Harris. Piece rates based on the perform-ance of Harris would be as ridiculous for Poder as wild-geese schedules imposed on tame geese fattening for Michaelmas; but, without injustice to Keief, King, and Clohessy, the nat-ural Hauf s, Boyces, and the Harris clan can be selected for their natural work and be correspondingly rewarded.
There are places where Poder and Clohessy would fit, even as the tame goose, plucked for
its feathers and prepared for the feast, shows 100 per cent efficiency, and the thin, stringy
wild goose is far below par. The schedule must fit the man and the man the schedule ; there is
no such thing as a definite universal schedule. At best there is a broad schedule band (in the
diagram, the region between 80 per cent and 120 per cent) and the records will show clearly
whether the men have been selected to fit the schedule and whether the schedule fits the man.
Irrespective of any current wage rate, a shop cannot be filled with the Hauf to Harris thor-
oughbreds for the wages that will attract the Poders and Clohessys.
If all conditions were absolutely standard-ized, if all operations were also perfectly stand-
ardized, piece rates might apply with reason-able equity and fairness to the tame geese trav-
eling the same road in the same weather with the same tar-sand shoes; but what about the
wild geese far overhead? They must have schedules based on other standards.
The physiological objection to piece rates is that they stimulate strenuousness, increase of effort, when what we want is a betterment of conditions so as to achieve greater result with less effort.
In the diagrams on pages 270 and 272 the speeds per hour for the best athletic records
from start up to 100 miles show the time relations between different methods for the same
distance. The results are tabulated as follows :
Table of Athletic Records
One Mile One Hundred Miles
_/ . , k.
Actual Relative Actual Relative Rela-
speed speed speed speed tive to
1 mile
Amateur walking..
9.2
100
4.8
100
52
Amateur running..
14.
152
5.6
117
40
Amateur skating..
21.8
237
14.
292
64
Amateur bicycle
31.4
341
20.2
421
64
Professional bicycle
55.3
601
35.5
740
64
It is known that each of these men put forth his best efforts, and assuming the men to be
equal in strength, endurance, skill, we become certain that the mere addition of skates to the
shoes increased the speed for the same effort 2.37 times at one mile and 2.92 times at 100
miles; that the substitution of a bicycle for skates increases the speed 3.4 times at one mile,
4.2 times at 100 miles ; and that the addition of a helping pacer, who in no way touches the
rider, merely shielding him from the wind, in-creases the speed above walking six-fold at one
mile, 7.4 times at 100 miles. All these records are of abnormal, excessive, and extreme speeds,
but who can doubt that the relation would re-main the same if they were halved, thus brought
down to high normal — 4.6 miles for walking, 28 miles for paced bicycle?
The time may come when aeroplanes rising on the wind as do the birds will glide on up-
ward currents, as also do the birds, at a rate of two miles a minute for a thousand miles, or
twenty-five times as fast as the walker, yet ex-ert no muscular effort, using delicate instru-
ments to feel the wind, and intelligence to guide the flyer.
The program relies heavily on interactive demonstrations, teamwork, video, and class exercises. This program has been presented many times for automobile manufacturers and OEM suppliers, and uses numerous video examples of real plant scenes in fabrication and assembly operations. The overall program consists of several "modules" that may added or deleted to produce a custom program of 24 to 40 hour duration if desired.