Sunday, October 13, 2024

IIIE 2024 Conference - Jamshedpur - Innovation & AI Enabled Sustainable Growth: Emerging Roles of Industrial Engineers

 



INDIAN INSTITUTION OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING 

(IIIE)

Presents

Theme 

September 27th - 28th 2024

“Innovation & AI Enabled Sustainable Growth: Emerging Roles of Industrial Engineers”




Indian Institution of Industrial Engineering का राष्ट्रीय सम्मेलनऔर8वांअंतरराष्ट्रीय सम्मेलन काआयोजन

आइए जानते हैं इस संदर्भ में अधिक विस्तार से टाटा स्टील के वाइस प्रेसिडेंट चाणक्य चौधरी एवं वहां उपस्थित लोगों

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2gfpMqfvf4




What is Industrial Engineering? What are its principles? 

Productivity Profit Income #CostReduction  SocietyProsperity  Lean  Comfort  Health  Safety

IISE   IndustrialEngineering  2017 Pittsburgh Conference Presentation -  Video. 

Very Popular - 9775 Views.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU8CdWfZZdU



The Indian Institution of Industrial Engineering (IIIE) is a non-profit organization 

established in 1957 and registered under The Society Registration Act, 1860 

for propagating the profession of Industrial Engineering in India and is also a 

Registered Public Trust under The Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, 1950, with its 

headquarters situated in Navi Mumbai. Notably, IIIE holds the status of being 

an International Organization Partner with the Institute of Industrial & Systems 

Engineers, USA. IIIE is dedicated to the advancements of Industrial Engineering 

education and practice and to the application of such scientific knowledge to 

assist in the management of all endeavourers. IIIE has played a significant role in 

recognizing and encouraging excellence in the field of industrial engineering.

To honor outstanding achievements and contributions made by individuals, 

the institution has instituted numerous honors and awards. Furthermore, IIIE 

also acknowledges organizational excellence by presenting Performance 

Excellence Awards for Organizations that have made significant strides in this 

domain.

In September 2024, the Indian Institution of Industrial Engineering (IIIE) is all set 

to host its 66th National Convention in Jamshedpur, with the theme “Innovation 

& AI enabled Sustainable Growth: Emerging Roles of Industrial Engineers”. This 

event promises to be a pivotal platform for professionals, researchers, and 

enthusiasts in the field. Gathering in the vibrant city of Jamshedpur, attendees 

will delve into the latest advancements in industrial engineering practices 

influenced by the rapidly evolving landscape of emerging technologies. Experts 

will share valuable insights and discoveries, showcasing how innovation and 

AI are transforming traditional industrial engineering principles for sustainable 

growth.

The convention will feature enlightening sessions, thought-provoking keynote 

addresses, and dynamic panel discussions focusing on the impact of 

Innovation and AI on industrial engineering practices. Participants will have 

the opportunity to engage in in-depth discussions, collaborate on innovative 

solutions and forge new partnerships.

In addition to these enlightening activities, IIIE will also host a productivity 

contest for teams from various organizations across India. This contest will 

challenge young minds to incorporate technologies into their ideas and 

solutions, pushing the boundaries of productivity enhancement in the industrial 

domain.

The 66th National Convention with its thematic focus on the impact of 

innovation and AI as a catalyst for advancing industrial engineering practices for 

sustainable growth. Jamshedpur, a steel city will provide the perfect backdrop 

for this inspiring and transformational gathering. So, participate with your team 

who are in decision making positions to leverage the latest productivity trends 

which we are sure, will broaden the horizon of your team and they will be the 

change agents.

ABOUT

As part of the conference, we are actively seeking full research/technical papers 

that align with the theme “Innovation & AI enabled Sustainable Growth: Emerging 

Roles of Industrial Engineers”. We welcome papers from all fields of Industrial 

Engineering that are relevant to this theme.

Sub-Themes for the convention are: 

• Transforming Industries through Artificial Intelligence, Advanced 

Technologies and Automation

• Integration of Internet of Things & Robotics for Smart Manufacturing

• Sustainability Initiatives for Green Growth & Productivity

• Carbon Neutral Initiative & Innovation

• Circular Economy and Productivity

• Resource Productivity in Manufacturing and Services Sectors

• Use of AI & Technology in Supply Chain

• Industrial Engineering for Sustainable Urbanization

• Healthcare Advancements through Industrial Engineering

• Industrial Engineering’s Role in Global Electric Vehicle Transition

• Transforming Agriculture through Industrial Engineering Innovations


We encourage authors to submit their innovative research/technical work in any of 

these areas to contribute to the advancement of Industrial Engineering practices. 

All papers will undergo a rigorous peer-review process by our distinguished panel 

of experts. Accepted papers will have the opportunity to be presented during 

the conference, and selected papers may also be considered for publication in 

our conference proceedings or journals.




Organizing Committee :

Convener :

Mr. Rama Shanker Singh, Mob : +91 9234567849

Co - Conveners :

• Mr. B N Bhagat, Mob : +91 7368806028

• Mr. Dileep K, Mob : +91 9686204209

• Mr. Rakesh Shrivastava, Mob : +91 9204058112

• Mr. H C Pandey

• Mr. M L Agarwal

• Mr. R S Banerjee

• Mr. Y P Rao


Coordinators :

• Mr. Avishek Tiwary, Mob : +91 6200319494

• Mr. Sachin M S, Mob : +91 9264476270

• Ms. Sudarameenakshi Sivaraj

• Mr. Sushovan Ghosh

• Mr. Nishant Kumar Singh

• Mr. Shantilal Shambharkar

• Mr. Anand Kumar Singh

• Mr. Md. Zinharuddin

• Mr. Antesh Kumar

• Mr. Sandeep Singh

• Mr. Sumit

• Mr. Pritish Kumar Jha



Board of Advisors – IIIE National Council :


• Sri Rahul Sahai, President

• Dr. Amiya Kumar Behera, Chairman

• Dr. Dhananjay R. Dolas, Vice Chairman

• Dr. R L Shrivastava, Vice Chairman

• Dr. A.V.V. Prasada Raju, Hony. Secretary

• Sri M. B. Kulkarni, Hony. Jt. Secretary

• Dr. Dhanraj P Tambuskar, Jt. Secretary

• Sri Yogesh S. Dipnaik, Hony. Treasurer

• Sri P K Jain

• Dr. Tushar N Desai

• Sri Pankaj N. Shah

• Dr. Gajendra R Potey

• Dr. Sasmeeta Tripathy

• Dr. R S Nehete

• Dr. C M Choudhari

• Sri T R Guliani

• Sri G. Krishnamurthy,

Chairman, BOE

• Prof. Ashish Agarwal

• Sri Praveer Agarwal

• Sri Ravichandran V 

• Sri Siddesh Dubey

• Sri Rama Shanker Singh

• Dr. Rajesh Prabhu Gaonkar

• Prof. Santanu Das

• Dr. B Ravishankar,

Editor-in-Chief, IEJ


Ud. 13.10.2024

Pub. 8.10.2024




Chapter XIII THE ELEVENTH PRINCIPLE: WRITTEN STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS - Harrington Emerson



Chapter XIII THE ELEVENTH PRINCIPLE: WRITTEN STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS


THE human race is old and its upward progress slow; how old, no one knows. French, Italian, Spanish speech are de-scended from Latin dialects already differen-tiated twenty-four hundred years ago, yet the
modern languages are so much alike that the educated foreigner, having learned to read one, can forthwith read and understand the other. Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Irish, German, Russian, although developed from a common language, are so very far apart that it may easily have taken fifty-thousand years for their divergence. How far back beyond this time were the black, red, and white races one, how much further back when homo sapiens branched off? Egypt is historically the oldest nation, yet the begin-nings of Egypt were on geologically the most recent of ground, the river bottom and delta of
the Nile. Two hundred and fifty thousand years to bring about the difference between
man and an ancestral being probably as intelli-gent as a chimpanzee ! Counting three genera-
tions to a century, the human race has behind it 7,500 generations, and astonishingly little advance per generation to show.

The upward progress of man has been doubly hindered. Compared to animals, birds and,
above all, insects, his brain cells mature very slowly. A dog two years old knows far more
than a child of five, and a five-year-old dog usually has more wisdom than a man of
twenty-five. The silkworm, the spider, the firefly, the bee, and the ant develop marvelous
skill in a few weeks. The progress of insects is therefore due partly to the rapid succession
of generations, a cause Darwin pointed out, and partly to the rapidity of mental processes
in each short life. Man has intelligence, but
it works with distressing slowness, and each
generation has failed to transmit more than a
very small part of the advance to its successor.

Rapid progress can be made in a generation.
The child is born a rank animal, it is a savage
until its fifth year, a barbarian more or less
until maturity, yet ripens and mellows into a
civilized being. When one considers medical
students with their disreputable pranks and
practices, one wonders where the comforting
and respectable family physicians come from!
It actually takes only thirty years to pass from
animalism to semi-divinity, yet the race, after
7,500 times 33 years, is still far below this
standard. Why has progress been so exceed-
ingly slow ? There have been high ideals in the
past ; there have been leaders of great common-
sense, from the seven wise men of Greece to
Franklin; there have been competent counsel-
lors, the sages, seers and prophets, the sibyls
and saints of all ages ; there has been discipline,
even severe, cruel, exterminating; there has
been the fair deal taught by the Buddha and
by the Christ, by the St. Vincent de Pauls, by
the Elizabeth Frys, and by the Florence Night-
ingales; there have been records graven in
stone; there have been plans, schedules and
despatching; conditions and operations here
and there down through the ages have been
standardized — but all this has been spasmodic ;
little, so little has endured! There was no
ratchet, the tide rose and fell, the children
repeated the mistakes of their fathers; those
full of years and wisdom became dust, and took
their knowledge with them. We failed to hold
as a genus or as a race what each individual
had learned. Within the last five-thousand
years there has been progress. The art of
drawing, of carving imperishably, has trans-
mitted a little of what our ancestors achieved
and knew. More often, inspired with vanity,
these great ones commemorated their own mis-
deeds. Knowledge was the carefully guarded
secret of the priestly caste, but in the finally
published sacred books, our own and other
Bibles, we do find moral and practical wisdom
written and transmitted. Printing, less than
five-hundred years old, has been called the art
preservative of all arts. That, of course, de-
pends. Most of our daily papers and most of
our books embody and preserve nothing of per-
manent value ; they are merely an extension of
the babel of Bander log, they are merely
printed simian chatterings, but nevertheless
printing has given us the possibility of creating
an eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britan-
nica.

Pumpelly tells a story of a Japanese student
of metallurgy, who about 1870 possessed an
English work on blast furnaces, an English-
Dutch dictionary, and a Dutch-Japanese dic-
tionary, and with these as guides he construct-
ed and operated a fairly successful blast fur-
nace for smelting iron ore. This shows what
can be done by Standard Permanent Written
Instructions.

We have no accurate description of the engines of destruction invented by Archi-medes for the defense of Syracuse against the Romans. They must have been interesting since they lifted whole ships and dropped them endwise into the sea or onto the rocks.

It would seem as if maps and charts would be an easy task. A stranger on an unknown
coast, in an unknown land, an unknown city, knows more about it if he has a good chart
or map than the native.

I have insisted that a map of Boston shall be properly oriented and displayed in our Bos-
ton office, for, excepting professional criminals who have to be versed in devious paths and
ways, there is probably no modern Boston native who could readily and accurately lay a
rational course from point to point in that city. Roaming and navigating savages who really
need maps are very skilful in drawing them. Sir Edward Parry discovered Hecla Strait
from a map drawn off-hand for him by an Eskimo woman ; but the higher the civilization
of the map-maker, the more in the past he sub-stituted imagination and arts for facts. There
are Egyptian maps dating from 1400 B. C, but in spite of this long history it has been aston-
ishingly difficult to make progress in charts until very recent times. Errors are perpetu-
ated, truth is forgotten, advance is slow. As late as 1900, charts of the Alaskan coast issued
by the United States were said to be thirty miles wrong, and nearly all commercial map
makers still represent mountain chains as cater-pillars, and the fringe of the shore is adorned
with a blue wavy frill. As for railroad maps, the less said the better.

The early land-survey maps of our western
plains were concocted in central offices, not on
the ground; therefore on the Colorado and
Nebraska line they do not tie in by four miles
and a half east and west. The Government
paid the full price for accurate surveys, but
with a man in charge of a keg of whiskey gal-
loping ahead on a mule, with several investi-
gating Indians in war paint galloping behind,
burnt matches stuck in the ground did duty
as the required and sworn to charred stakes.
The maps made from the surveys were not
standard permanent instructions of much
value. Modern geodetic and geological-survey
charts, modern coast-survey charts, are ad-
mirable and useful beyond criticism ; but it has
taken a long while to reach this perfection.

On one occasion I was invited to invest in
a gold placer in Wyoming to be washed out by
hydraulicking. The geological-survey contour
chart showed conclusively that it would be im-
possible to secure sufficient water with suffi-
cient head to wash the gravel. What has been
done with the prospect since dredges have been
put into successful operation I do not know.
On another occasion I reported adversely on
an Alaskan ditch proposition. The watershed
tributary to the ditch was easily integrated
from the Government contour chart, the yearly
precipitation was also known. The promoters
claimed 5,000 miner's inches ; I could not figure
more than 500; investors nevertheless went
ahead. The next year they reported that the
season had been one of unusual drought, and
the year after that the company was in the
hands of a receiver.

American law is in most States the out-
growth of English common law, and in our
Spanish and French States, of Roman law.
The common law in England is the outcome of
custom finally passed on by the courts or de-
fined by acts of Parliament. In many of our
State codes we have attempted to reduce the
principles to statutes governing particular
cases. This is often helpful and often not.
Moses laid down principles: Thou shalt not
kill; Honor thy father and thy mother — but
the enforcement became specific. Codes sup-
plemented principles.

"If any man smite his neighbor mortally,
then the elders of his city shall deliver him
into the hand of the avenger of blood that he
may die."

"Thine eye shall not pity, life for life, eye
for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot
for foot."

"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious
son all the men of his city shall stone him with
stones that he die."

It was from snap decisions in specific cases
that the laws of the Medes and Persians grew
up, laws that changed not.

Lord Wolseley credits Napoleon with the
greatest intellect the human race has ever pro-
duced* Bonaparte, First Consul, personally
worked over the wording of the Civil Code, He
wanted its provisions so clear that even the
most ignorant peasant could understand. As
French is an admirably definite and clear lan-
guage, as the French have a passion for logic,
as the greatest legal minds of France aided
and were aided by Bonaparte in evolving this
code, it furnishes an admirable example of
Permanent Written Standard-Practice Instruc-
tions. It was, moreover, only one of seven
great organizing acts which he made into spe-
cific standard-practice instructions, these in-
structions having persisted almost unchanged
to the present time.

The standardizing operations, the ratchet
action, is of very great importance. A python
will swallow a deer, a garter snake will swal-
low a large frog. The snake's teeth are set
slanting backward. One jaw moves forward
over the flesh, takes hold and draws until the
other jaw can slip forward and sink the
curved teeth in. In this way the large body is
drawn into and forced through the small gullet.
The more difficult the operation the less is
there any slip back. It is easier to draw a fish
hook through a wound than out of it. In most
human affairs efficiency is in the end gained by
going forward and through rather than by
struggling forever on the near side.

An American weakness is to be discouraged
by difficulties and to back-water instead of
overcoming troubles and going forward. All
the world knows that compound steam-engines
use less coal and water than simple engines.
The compound principle was successfully ap-
plied in France and Germany to locomotives.
The steam pressures were naturally much
higher. American railroads rushed into com-
pounds with inadequate preparation, knowl-
edge, or designs. Difficulties of all kinds de-
veloped, due partly to the high pressures, partly
to the added dependent and increasingly ineffi-
cient sequences. A case dwells in memory in
which it took 80 hours to renew an interme-
diate packing. Compounds as tried proved ex-
pensive and troublesome both to operate and to
repair. Instead of being perfected as in France
and in Germany, in order to gain the advan-
tages of the principle, they have been aban-
doned by American roads almost without ex-
ception. Temporary expediency governs — not
ideals.

The marvelous results due to standardization
of gunnery practice in the American fleet have
already been referred to. These results were
achieved by the ratchet process, by holding
onto every gain and by never allowing any slip
back, these results being secured by a volumin-
ous book of instructions and suggestions. In
this book best ways as ascertained to date are
specifically prescribed, by written, permanent
standard-practice instructions, but these in-
structions are subject to a bombardment of
suggestions and all these suggestions, however
foolish, are tabulated, printed, and confiden-
tially published.

The grains of wheat are winnowed from the
chaff, common sense finds its own reward in
approval, and the makers of foolish sugges-
tions are ridiculed and shamed by their own
comrades. Those in charge of these instruc-
tions, of the analysis of practice and results,
waste no time in finding out what European
rivals are doing. They know that the way to
discover the North Pole is to go there as fast
as possible, not to waste time and money
watching the preparations of others; they
know that the way to shoot quick and straight
and far in a heavy sea is to attain high speed
and shatter targets at long ranges, rather than
to spy on what the other fellow is about.
The feeling about this naval practice is akin
in spirit to the attitude of an American grain
exporter who showed a Hungarian investigator
our whole elevator and grain shipment installa-
tions, from the wheat fields of Dakota to At-
lantic steamers. He was asked, "Why do you
show foreigners, future competitors and rivals,
our methods ?" "Because they can't understand
half they see, they can't remember half they
understand, and by the time they have copied
all we have, it will be obsolete with us and we
shall be ten years ahead." This applies, how-
ever, equally to our own backwardness com-
pared to foreigners in so many other directions.
The way to forge ahead is to get busy, not to
copy.

It is not only in its charts, in its naval gun-
nery, in its agricultural department, that the
United States Government has established per-
manent written instructions.

The specifications of the purchasing depart-
ment of the navy are at once the most com-
plete, the most modern, and the best I have ever
seen. That the plans were evolved and per-
fected by graduates of Annapolis speaks highly
for the practical value of the general education
there imparted.

There are many hundred different specifica-
tions covering everything that the navy regu-
larly uses; the specifications for eggs covered
several pages; the specifications for potatoes
are as follows:

Potatoes, Irish (East Coast) in sacks or barrels. —
To be selected stock of standard market sorts, sound,
fresh, free from scab and mechanical injuries. One
price only shall be quoted by bidders for both old and
new potatoes^ either of which may be delivered at the
option of the contractor. Potatoes shall measure not
less than 2 inches in smallest diameter.

To be delivered in either sacks or barrels, according
to the ordinary commercial usage of the locality in
which delivery is made. Each barrel or bag to be
marked with the net weight.

Copies of the above specifications can be obtained
upon application to the various Navy pay offices or to
the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, Navy Depart-
ment, Washington, D. C.

When advances are not only definitely re-
corded but when the best practice is carefully
and systematically reduced to writing, progress
made is held and built upon in an industrial
plant or any other undertaking. Every shop,
every institution, has its great body of common-
law practices that have gradually crept in, com-
mon law variously understood and variously in-
terpreted by those most affected. Often the
traditions of the past are treasured up in the
brain of some old employee, who transmits
them, much as the memories of old bards were
formerly the only available history.

We have known foremen to refuse deliber-
ately to tell a new official how certain work was
done. The defiant stand assumed was that this
was a personal secret. The history of brass
castings is filled with these secrets of composi-
tions. An English tool forger pretended he
could smell good steel and he imposed the same
conviction on his employers. Whenever, in any
plant, Bonaparte's most lasting work is under-
taken — namely, written codification of current
practices — it is astonishing how much is found
that is contradictory, how much is vague and
indefinite, how much is involved and compli-
cated that might be direct and simple, how
much is wholly lacking.

Each one of the ten preceding efficiency prin-
ciples can and should be reduced to written,
permanent standard-practice instructions so
that each may understand the whole and also
his own relation to it. In some plants the only
rules obtainable or visible are certain subsi-
diary conduct rules, offensively expressed and
ending with the threat of discharge.

I remember a wily superintendent who, when
asked by a manager to post some additional
offensive rule, modestly suggested it would
have more force if signed by the manager him-
self. The latter fell into the trap and posted the
rule, which was soon obliterated by abusive and
scurrilous amendments, comments, and epi-
thets. The superintendent himself did not lose
prestige. The ideals of a plan or undertaking
can be expressed in a few words. One of the
mottoes of American naval practice is: "Ef-
ficiency and Economy." This is amplified into
special rules governing all kinds of activities.
I have before me the following :

Navy Department

Washington, April 22nd, 1911.
Attention is invited to General Order No. 86 of August
20, 1909.

G. v. L. Meyer,
Secretary of the Navy.
The effort to save coal shall not be allowed to dimin-
ish the efficiency of the ship or to affect adversely the
health or comfort of the personnel. It is strictly for-
bidden to save coal by curtailing the use of the turrets
or steamers or by unduly reducing light, ventilation,
or the supply of fresh water.

It is to be noticed that the rule is not one of
spur toward higher effort, but to hold back the
over-zealous ; it is not one to stimulate the in-
efficiency of depression, but to restrain the over-
efficiency of joyous exaggeration. It is not a
rule "that enforces a high-speed process in
which none but the strong survive," but it is a
rule protecting the interests of all.

Discipline and the fair deal do not require
voluminous initial instructions, although both
discipline and the fair deal should curtail au-
tomatism.

Standard-Practice Instructions are the per-
manent laws and practices of a plant. What
these laws, practices and customs are should
first be carefully ascertained and be reduced
to writing by a competent and high-class inves-
tigator, and it will be all the better if he has
had legal training. It will take considerable
work to find out what the practices are, as dif-
ferent officials from president down may have
different opinions and theories and also the
practice may vary from month to month. It
is quite usual to find the actual practice quite
different from what the general manager or
president supposes it is. Men do what they can,
not what they have been told. The purpose is
to find out what current practice is, not what it
is supposed to be.

The next step in the work is to harmonize
the discrepancies, to cut out what is useless or
harmful, and to supplement the resultant body
by needed additions.

When this constructive work has been per-
formed there will be a preliminary code. In
actual practice it will be found that it is still
defective, incomplete or contradictory. It is. to
be made workable not by throwing it to the
winds and reverting to the previous state of
semi-anarchy every time a difficulty arrives,
but by carefully considered amendments. The
code being made up of a number of different
statements and enactments can be amended by
sending out notice of withdrawal of any enact-
ment, at the same time issuing the amended
enactment, the substitution being effected as in
the illustration that follows : —

On and after receipt, substitute Rule 5a, dated June
1, 1911, for Rule 5, dated September 28, 1909. Read
carefully the new rule, note the changes made and
send signed receipts to head office.

The maintenance of the code is the duty of
a qualified, interested minor official to whom all
suggestions should be referred. The code itself
is not his creation but the outgrowth of the
plant's operating needs. The code goes out over
the signed signature of the highest available
official. There may be supplementary signa-
tures of the department officials. For example,
rules for the installation and maintenance of
belting should be drawn up by the official in
charge of maintenance, should be collated and
put in standard form by the codifier, should be
promulgated over the signatures of the super-
intendent, of department head, even of belt
foreman as well as of general manager or presi-
dent. The belt foreman's business, if he does
not like the rules, is not to sign them until he
has fought the matter out, but it is not his busi-
ness to disregard them. The natural inclination
is to prefer individual anarchy, but anarchy
never leads anywhere.

In time quite a body of standard-practice in-
structions will grow up, most of them suggested
and evolved by the employees. Records will re-
quire many pages of specific instructions, if the
records are to be reliable, immediate and ade-
quate. Standardized conditions also ultimately
require a large volume, but the largest volume
of all is the book covering standardized opera-
tions. It is pathetically and ignorantly sup-
posed that standard instructions destroy a
man's initiative and make of him an automaton.
Compared to the drop of the sparrow through
the air, or the scamper of the squirrel down a
tree, a staircase does indeed limit the initiative
of a man going from the roof to the ground.
He who prefers it may let himself down from
the window by a rope. I prefer the limitation,
common-sense, safety and ease of the staircase.
A ferryboat limits the initiative of a commuter
entering the city and a tunnel even more limits
this initiative. Those who prefer it are wel-
come to the right to swim the Hudson or to use
a small skiff of their own. The flanges of the
locomotive and car wheels confine the train to
the steel rails, and this is a great curtailment
of initiative compared to the free path of the
buffalo or of the bull-whacker across the plains.

The fact is that the limitation of initiative
professedly so dreaded is wholly imaginary. To
follow the better and easier way is to lessen
effort for the same result, to leave more oppor-
tunity for higher initiative to invent or evolve
still better ways.

The aviator flying 72 miles an hour is the
greatest initiator in the world to-day, yet to a
degree never before experienced he is limited
by his engine, and nothing would be so welcome
as standard-practice instructions that would
help keep his engine going, as automatic stabil-
ity for his plane, gladly relinquishing his own
initiative in favor of tested standard practice
in both these respects.

Any undertaking run without written standard-practice instructions is incapable of progressive advance, but by means of written instructions advances far more rapid than those attained by insects and birds are possible. Wireless telegraphy is but suggested, experi- ments described, and inside of ten years our
coast is fringed with the masts of rival systems and messages are transmitted across the ocean !
The first flights of aeroplanes were but eight  years ago, and to-day they are carrying twelve
passengers or flying 72 miles an hour. Five years of planned, attained, and recorded prog- ress will accomplish more than twenty years of rule of thumb tucked away under the hats of shifting employees.


Commentary by KVSSNRao


Any undertaking run without written standard-practice instructions is incapable of progressive advance, but by means of written instructions advances far more rapid than those attained by insects and birds are possible.

With the above statement, Emerson brings into picture knowledge management, a popular theme today.


Ud. 13.10.2024
Pub. 3.10.2023

Chapter 11 THE NINTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS - Harrington Emerson


Chapter XI THE NINTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS
(Harrington Emerson - The Twelve Principles of Efficiency)

"HITCH YOUR WAGON TO A STAR"

THE larva, grub, or worm crawls from the egg and its existence is governed by the accident of its birth site and surroundings. Usually it stays where it was hatched, eats and grows, and it arouses neither enthusiasm by the interest of its life nor admiration for its beauty. It is elementally dull and prosaic, for it has neither standardized itself to command conditions nor standardized conditions to suit itself. At last, having reached the limit of its growth, it passes into the pupa or chrysalid state of coma, and emerges, physically, spiritually and mentally a different individual. Who would recognize in the purple emperor butterfly the caterpillar of its previous existence? The butterfly is as beautiful as the worm was repulsive, as mobile as the worm was slow, a creature of the sunlight and sky instead of the shadows and of the earth.

The water-beetle is the lord of the elements. It runs on land with speed, under the water it is one of the quickest and most graceful of swimmers, and through the air it is the fastest of flyers; it seeks its food in the water, it emerges at dusk, and after dark flies toward the moon, or to its destruction in some electric light. More perfectly than any other creature it has standardized itself to play with and command all the elements but fire.

The spider, not so standardized to earth, water, and air, as the water-beetle, has not to the same degree conquered the elements. The beetle swims, runs, flies without effort because its ancestors had aspirations and early achieved victory. The spider works consciously, much as men might work. She drops from a height, not with wings to sustain her, but holding on to a thread made for the occasion, strong and elastic. In mid-fall she can stop, the factor of safety being nothing, yet I have never seen the silken thread break. She can regain, if she wishes, her exact starting point, or, reaching the ground, can cut loose and run. The spider would disdain as clumsy a suspension bridge, for she constructs a canopy whose outlying guy stays have, in proportion to her length, greater reach than the span of the Brooklyn Bridge, whose strength in proportion to construction is greater than that of the best steel wire. The balloon spider, if at all interested in human balloons, must despise them! She, on a calm, sun-lit summer day, will spin out a filament which, warmed by the sun rises straight into the air. Whether the spider, like the soaring birds, first locates an upward air current and then spins her thread, or starts an upward air current though the warmed molecules adhering to the thread I do not know; but in any case the filament rises, rises, until the spider knows it will lift her, and then loosening hold, she soars skyward to be swept by some upper air drift miles away in a few hours, her relatively great weight carried upward and sustained by a thread weighing not the hundredth part of what she weighs. Standardized conditions there must be of almost inconceivably delicate adjustment, of sunlight, of calm, of length and make of thread.

Both soaring birds and balloon spiders and many floating seeds and spores use directly the heat of the sun to sustain them. What bird ever soared at night or upward through a fog?

There are other insects that have solved deeper mysteries than either the water-beetle or the spider. Men can run on the earth, not as well as the beetle ; they can swim, not as well as the beetle; they can glide through the air, not as well as the beetle; they can climb down or up ropes, not as readily as the spider; they can stretch suspension bridges not comparable to the canopy of the spider; they can soar in balloons, not as safely or as conveniently as the balloon spider — for these are all mechanical operations. But the firefly produces light by a chemistry of whose laws and operations we have no grasp. The firefly has not standardized itself to the daylight. It wanted light when it was night, not general, diffused and impersonal light, so it creates in the velvet darkness the momentary and intermittent personal flash, for the moment making itself the centre of the visible universe. It not only refused to acquiesce in the standard light of day and darkness of night, but it remade the conditions of the universe to suit itself. 

This is not all of the marvel. The firefly and the human both have eyes, and in these eyes are minute nerves which make us aware of light and interpret to us the shape and color and distance of all the outside world.

There are, therefore, two distinct methods of standardizing conditions — to standardize ourselves so as to command the unalterable extraneous facts, earth, water, air, gravity, wave vibrations; to standardize the outside facts so that our personality becomes the pivot on which all else turns. With the living example of the beetle who commands earth, water and air, with the example of the firefly, which, without effort makes light where there was none, with the lesson of our own eyes which have given us a beginning of command of infinite space and time, shall we fear to attempt standardizations of conditions now but dimly conceivable?

The easiest way for any individual to live his own life in fullest measure is either to standardize himself to suit the environment or to standardize the environment to suit himself. The horse and other animals stay where they are in winter and grow thick and long fur to meet the rigors of the climate. The bird of passage changes itself not at all, but suits the climate to its taste by picking out the one it wants and going to it. Either way is an easy way, but man, the youngest of nature's brood, has attempted to satisfy great wants without standardizing either himself or the environment.

To build the Great Pyramid absorbed the lives of 100,000 men for 20 years, and it is the greatest monument of inefficiency the world bears because condition of building were not standardized; yet the Egyptian builders had eyes which reached out and recognized, through billions of miles of empty intervening space, the groupings of the stars. Without sweat on our brows, nor callosities on our hands, supplementing the same human eyes with telescope, with spectroscope and with camera, we tear the distant stars apart, we dissect them, we drag them into light out of the depth of darkness, we assist at their birth, trace their lives and predict their extinction. Thus, at last has man begun to make himself
infinite and the universe small.

In the building of the pyramids, of the Parthenon, and of St. Peters, man followed a law-less fancy and not an efficiency need, or the work and time and expense would not have been so lavish for so small return. Man has, in fact, until very recently remained in the larval state. He put on clothes to keep out the bitter cold, but little further advanced than the Tierra del Fuegan who shifts a patch of fur between his naked body and the wind. He huddled over a fitful fire to banish the cold, and these two feeble steps upward in the adjustment of self and the conquest of environment were almost all. At best, until recently he has tried to imitate the beetle and the spider rather than imitate the firefly. He invented shoes that he might travel along the rough trails, he invented skates that he might glide over the ice, he invented boats and sails that water and air might carry him. But at last he has awakened.

Roads were built that a barefooted multitude might travel in slow comfort. The distance from Paris to Bordeaux is 323 miles, and this the fastest walker once covered in 114 hours and 42 minutes, or at the rate of 2.8 miles an hour. Even after a standardized path had been created it took many generations before a bright mind evolved the idea that a revolving wheel would be more adapted to the road than alternating footsteps, so we had the roller, the cart, the wheelbarrow, and at last the bicycle was perfected; but even this last step took three generations. In the bicycle man still used the alternating swing of the legs, but he propelled himself nearly seven times as fast, so that Huret made the 323 miles in 16 hours and 45 minutes, at the rate of 19.8 miles an hour. But why should a man use his own efforts ? He cannot trill his legs as he can his fingers, and even if he could, the leg cannot push much harder than 200 pounds. He had already used steam to propel locomotives on their more mi-nutely standardized road, so he finally attached an explosive reciprocating engine to his road vehicle, an engine capable of making 1,200 strokes a minute for each of four, eight, four-teen, cylinders, as compared to the 140 strokes of each of two legs ; an engine capable of kicking 100 pounds per square inch for as many inches as the piston surface has area, as against the man's total power of push of less than 200 pounds. So that in his cushioned seat, with mere pressure of hand or foot, Gabriel, in the race from Paris to Madrid, made Bordeaux in 5 hours 13 minutes, or at the rate of 62.5 miles an hour. In this race the automobiles were con-fined to the road, the road was narrow, the people many, so a number were killed. Why there-fore be bound by the limitations of a road? Captain Bellinger, on an aeroplane, makes the same trip in 5 hours 21 minutes, actual flying time, at a speed of 60.35 per hour. Flying speed will soon be 80 miles an hour and already the French mathematicians are pointing out that many of the present difficulties of flight will vanish at the higher speed.

In the meantime, however, because conditions have been standardized, instead of building pyramids nearly 500 feet high in 20 years, our skyscrapers go up 600, 700, 800 feet in 10 months; we tunnel through mountains and, laughing at wind and wave, we send a floating palace, larger than St. Peters, through the ocean from continent to continent at the rate of nearly 29 miles an hour.

The principles under which the methods and practices of efficiency are grouped have been compared to the skeleton framework of a dome. The ribs of the dome are the principles, but the first layer can be started with one part of each rib in place, and with filling of various devices to complete the circle. As layers are added the ribs rise until they come closer together and at last coalesce. Some ribs may be carried to the top, others may stop part way up, their burden carried by others. In this series of essays each of the earlier ribs has been separately carried to the top, so that now there is less space for the later principles, much of their duty having been transferred to the principles already in place. To maintain reliable, immediate and adequate records we must have standardized conditions; to put in schedules we
must have standardized conditions; so the standardizing of conditions should precede schedules. But unless we have already adopted ideal schedules, how do we know what conditions, and the extent to which they must be standardized? Also, unless we have ideals as to standards, how can we create a high schedule?

It is perhaps because schedules and conditions react so on each other that progress is so disappointingly slow. We make a mean little schedule and meanly standardize conditions to suit. Francis Galton points out that the Basutos in Africa have the greatest difficulty in finding oxen fit for the forespan. The ox who stays in the centre of the herd is not the one struck down by the lion; so through many generations the independent bulls and cows have been eliminated until it requires careful watching to select, and careful training to develop, a calf capable of walking ahead and leading the others.

In human affairs, however, when we are on any schedule there are some who are not afraid to beat it, although the herd puts up a clamor that the effort is killing and should be prevented by combination. Perhaps the effort is temporarily killing; but ultimately some progressive soul aspires to a yet better schedule, and instead of foolishly trying to beat the record under the old conditions, restandardizes the conditions and thus makes an advanced schedule easier than the former schedule.

Records are again broken by effort, far less at its maximum than on the old schedule, but nevertheless discountenanced by the conservatives, until conditions are again restandardized and effort is still further diminished. Who has the harder time, the runner who precedes the cavalcade of an Oriental magnate, or the engineer of our fastest trains ? Who puts forth the greater effort, the peon who twelve hours a day carries load after load of ore in sacks on his back up a notched pole out of a deep Mexican mine, or the fireman who for two hours and a half between New York and Albany, calling it a day's work, shovels coal for the fastest train ? In the locomotive runs across Arizona where oil burners are used, even the fireman's work, usually so hard, has been converted into watching the water glass, watching the smoke, and with his fingers turning on and off water and oil supply.

The grub acquiesces in the obvious ; and until the last century, all but very few men acquiesced in the obvious. By force of ancestral habit this acquiescence is still the curse of most of us. Our ideals, our schedules, have been and are too low instead of too high. The 18-hour trains between the two largest American cities are on the highest regular long-distance schedules thus far attained; but on an open speed-way not comparable to the steel track in smoothness, an automobile with its little engine, and one man guiding, ran faster and longer, so that in comparison 18 hours seems slow; and, quite surely somewhere, some time — perhaps in China or Africa — Brennan's gyroscope car on a monorail, indifferent to both grades and curves, shortening distances one-fifth, will do in 8 hours what now takes 18.

In planning for standardized conditions, it is difficult not to skip the present and plan for the future; but even in the greatest American plants, the conditions imposed by an ignorant and inefficient past are accepted, schedules are toned down, and painful effort crowds out intelligent control. In one large plant where the heaviest and slowest piece took only 40 days for completion, the managers acquiesced for many years in a 9-month schedule, and after much special work felt pride instead of humiliation in a 6-month schedule. A 15-day schedule for general repairs to a locomotive is considered fast time and the average is more nearly 30, but if the time for each item is separately entered in a summary, it is hard to discover why 3 days would not be enough.

The battleship "Kansas" of the American Navy under an eminent efficiency commander went into dry-dock, water was pumped out of the dock, hull cleaned, scraped, painted, rudder post repacked, and the vessel floated again in less than 24 hours. For a steamer immediate repairs are otherwise important than for an isolated locomotive. The railroads, on the other hand, show marvelous speed, generally of the main-strength order, in clearing away a wreck or an earth slide or opening a snow blockade.

If a large publishing house could have freed itself from its own entangling traditions, it could have added a million dollars a year to its net income. The organization was tried out on some insignificant minor matters; it hesitated and balked and trembled for six months over what elsewhere was put into operation in six days and could go into operation in six hours, so the larger plans were not even submitted to it. A great superintendent of another plant had uncontrollable fear of boats of any kind; an-other large and successful manufacturer had fear of the subway in New York and could not be induced to go below ground. Similar fears overcome occasionally even the most wideawake men, and often the main obstacles in the path of progression are not the real and tangible difficulties, but the imaginary specters that terrorize and paralyze some part of the soul.

Ideals of standardized conditions are not Utopian, but are immediately and intensely practical, but ideals must precede selective action. The Greek sculptors in their studies took a hand from one, a foot from another, the torso from a third, the face and head from others, and aggregated them all into an ideal ; but this ideal existed in the mind or the sculptor could not have selected.


Who can tell why one hand is beautiful and another not, why one curve is pleasing and an-other disturbing? We recognize some forms of beauty as unerringly and without previous personal or race experience as we recognize that one note harmonizes with another.

It is far easier to demonstrate and to prove experimentally the value of standardized conditions than it is to prove beauty, especially for the small advances that are immediately possible, because all these advances are in successful operation somewhere ; but often it is easier to break away from all traditions, to put the eye in the point of the needle, to load the gun from the breech, to write with both hands, to photo-graph instead of drawing, to make half-tones instead of engravings, to pick cotton by a whirling serrated pencil instead of with fingers, to turn over 640 acres of land with gang plows hitched behind mechanical tractors, than it is to improve on the old way.

The artist must have aesthetic ideals, the musicians, musical ideals ; but the man who would bring about standardized conditions, either in himself or in his surroundings, must have conceptions of time, of effort, of cost; he must instinctively recognize that for each operation there is one combination of these three that is best for the ideal result. That ideal result may be an embroidered scarf which the lady with unlimited time, simple materials, and graceful, soothing effort has wrought. The ideal result may be the destruction of an enemy's battle-ship, twelve million dollars sunk in five minutes, by guns loaded, accurately aimed, and fired so as to hit, at the rate of two salvos a minute. Time minimum at whatever cost and effort !

In our individual lives, in our shops, in our nation, what are we trying to accomplish ? Are we taking too much time, is it costing too much, are we squandering our strength? Are we standardizing conditions so that time will not be wasted, so that money will not be thrown away, so that effort will not be in vain?

Harrington Emerson - The tenth Principle of Efficiency - Standardized Operations.



Ud 13.10.2024, 12.11.2021
Pub 3.10.2013















Industrial Engineering Terminology

 


Industrial engineering terminology. ASME, 1955

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005788095


Industrial Engineering: The art and science of utilizing and coordinating men, equipment, and materials to attain a desired quantity and quality of output at a specified time and at an optimum cost. This may include gathering, analyzing, and acting upon facts pertaining to building and facilities layouts, personnel organization, operating procedures, methods, processes, schedules, time standards, wage rates, wage payment plans, costs, and systems for controlling the quality and quantity of goods and services.


 Industrial Engineer: One who has the necessary education, training, experience, and personal attributes to perform the work included in the field of industrial engineering. 


Operation: n. The intentional changing of an object in any of its physical or chemical characteristics; the assembly or disassembly of parts or objects; the preparation of an object for another operation, transportation, inspection or storage; planning, calculating, or the giving or receiving of information.


Operation Analysis: 1. A study of the factors which affect the performance of an operation such as purpose of the operation, other operations on the part, inspection requirements, materials used, manner of handling material, setup and tool equipment, existing working conditions, and methods employed. 2. A procedure employed in studying the major factors which affect the general method of performing a given operation. 

Operation Analysis Chart: A form that lists all the important factors affecting the effectiveness of an operation and is used to guide the progress and insure the completeness of an operation analysis.


Standardization: A management sponsored program to establish criteria or policies that will promote uniform practices and conditions within the company and permit their control through comparisons. It deals with such areas as work quality and quantity, working conditions, wage rates, and production methods.





Ud. 13.10.2024
Pub. 16.5.2021


Productivity Engineering - Principle of Industrial Engineering



TAYLOR - NARAYANA RAO PRINCIPLES OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING


Download full paper - Principles of Industrial Engineering
IISE Annual Conference Proceedings - 2017.  Industrial and Systems Engineering Conference, Proquest
INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERS
https://www.proquest.com/docview/1951119980

Productivity Science - Productivity Engineering - Productivity Management - Important Steps of Industrial Engineering



2-Productivity Engineering


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Productivity Engineering - Principle of Industrial Engineering


Industrial engineering is primarily engineering redesign to improve productivity. Productivity engineering can be an alternative name to industrial engineering. Efficiency engineering is also an alternative name and it was used for the discipline by some authors.

Industrial engineering is concerned with redesign of engineering systems with a view to improve their productivity. Industrial engineers analyze productivity of each  resource used in engineering systems and redesign as necessary to improve productivity.

It has to be ensured that the increase in productivity due to the use of low-cost materials, processes and increasing speed of machines and men, should not lead to any decrease in quality of the output.

Similarly, operators should not feel any discomfort, not have any health problems or safety issues in the redesigned more productive processes.

Developments in Productivity science provide more and more directions for productivity engineering over the period.

______________________


______________________


Productivity Engineering


Productivity engineering is applied to engineering elements in products or services and processes. Engineering elements, activities, operations and processes are present in design, manufacturing, construction maintenance, operation, transportation, materials handling, and information processing etc. in industrial organizations. Engineering processes are present in agriculture and related activities and service businesses also.


Productivity Engineering - Focus Areas of Industrial Engineering 


Product Industrial Engineering

Process Industrial Engineering

Facilities Industrial Engineering

Human Effort Industrial Engineering

Principles of Productivity Engineering  -  Mundel - Nadler


Methods Redesign for Efficiency/Productivity - Material, Product Design, Material Transformation Steps, Machine Effort, Human Effort - Marvin Mundel, Gerald Nadler


Nadler credits Mundel for the following steps to be followed in methods redesign.

Product Industrial Engineering


1. Change the material being used or contemplated to help meet the goal for the operation being studied.
2. Change the present or contemplated design of product to help meet the goal for the operation being studied.

Process Industrial Engineering


3. Change the present or contemplated sequence of modification work on the material or product to help meet the goal of for operation being studied.
4. Change the equipment used or contemplated  for the operation to help meet the goal for the operation being studied.

Human Effort Industrial Engineering


5. Change the method or hand pattern used or contemplated for the operation to help the goal for operation being studied.


(Source: Gerald Nadler, Motion and Time Study, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1955,   p.193. Nadler in turn gives credit to Marvin E. Mundel, Motion and Time Study Principles and Practice, Prentice-Hall, New York, 1950, pp. 23-26.)

Industrial Engineering FREE Online Course Modules

Process Industrial Engineering Module Lessons - Notes


Productivity Engineering - Productivity Improvement Techniques (PITs)


Indicated by David Sumanth

Technology Based PITs

1. CAD, CAM, CIM
2. Robotics
3. Laser technology
4. Renewable energy
5. Energy conservation
6. Rebuilding old machines
7. Group Technology
8. Advanced and Recent Maintenance Technology
9. Material Handling Technology 
10. Material Reuse and Recycling

Product Based PITs

1. Value Engineering
2. Product Diversification
3. Product Simplification
4. Product Standardization
5. Product Related Research and New Product Development
6. Product Productivity Improvement through Reliability Improvement


Process (Task) Based PITs

1. Methods Engineering




New Productivity Improvement Techniques (PITs)


Technology Based PITs

1. Industry 4.0 Technology Set and Applications
2. Artificial Intelligence
3. Data and Business Analytics
4. Autonomation
5. PokaYoke

Product Based PITs

1. Design to Cost
2. Design for Value
3. Frugal Innovation
4. Smart Products
5. Digital Twin


Process (Task) Based PITs

1. Process Reengineering
3. Cloud Computing
4. Six Sigma
5. Lean Manufacturing (Toyota Production System)



Principles of Industrial Engineering - Narayana Rao - Detailed List

Clicking on the link will take you to more detailed content on the principle


The full paper on the principles by Prof. K.V.S.S. Narayana Rao is now available for downloading from IISE 2017 Annual Conference Proceedings in Proquest Journal Base.



Updated  2024 - 13.10.2024
2023 - 27.1.2023 
2021 - 8.9.2021, 25.8.2021
2019 - 10 November 2019,  1 June 2019
2018 - 25 May
First Published  29 June 2017

Chapter 12 THE TENTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS - Harrington Emerson


Ubiquity of Industrial Engineering Principle of  Industrial Engineering.

Engineering subjects belong to one engineering branch or other. Every engineering branch has product design process, process design process, production process, inspection process, material handling process, storage process, equipment operating process, equipment maintenance process, equipment replacement process, equipment retirement process, reuse and recycling process.

Industrial engineers have to develop productivity science based on productivity measurements for all engineering processes and output, do productivity engineering to improve productivity and do productivity management to plan, manage and realize productivity improvement. To do it, industrial engineers need to have the knowledge of the concerned engineering subject, process or output.





Chapter XII THE TENTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS


Standardized Operation - planned - trained - practiced - used - monitored - improved.

HE talked to me for ten minutes, outlined enough work for ten years, and expected it to be completed in ten days." This is the concise summing up of an interview between an efficient worker and his employer. It is so easy to perceive short-comings, so easy to plan work, so hard to realize that endless activity through endless time is the price of perfection. The hopefulness of humanity is not a recent development.

Moses came down into camp with his tables of stone and the ten commandments. It took one minute and fifty seconds to read them slowly and impressively. Moses expected that the tribes assembled would listen, practice, and become perfect before they reached the Promised Land. Thirty-five hundred years have elapsed and the breach of most of the commandments is still very popular. It is because the virtues extolled are not obvious, or instinctive, that they have to be graven on stone, that they have to be repeated weekly if not daily, that they have to be incorporated in our codes and enforced by our courts. Nature has ultimate ideals, but nature's creatures are not habitually idealists, reverent, kindly, clean, chaste, or honest. Ideals are so obscure that most of us do not know what ideals we hold. The warrior still holds an exalted and honorable position, not on account of his heroic courage, but on account of the potential carnage. The corners engineered in Wall Street, the ebb outward of enhanced securities, the flow inward of the same securities artificially depreciated, constitute a tolerated and even admired phase of modern business ; and so it goes. Two minutes for orders — a life time, an aeon, for realization ! Can we wonder, therefore, that industrial operations are unstandardized — that the Moses who should lead the mob out of the wilderness flounders around for forty years, never arrives at all, and (if biblical accounts are correct) left as villainous a band of marauders, of Apaches, as ever existed to fall on the cities of Canaan? If this were all that the very great and extraordinary actual leader Moses could accomplish, need we wonder that the ordinary shop managers are not more successful?

We begin indeed with ideals; we expect end results; we leap over the intervening stations of the preceding nine principles, much as if we expected a train to run from New York to San Francisco with one helping of coal, water, lubrication, with one train crew. The rope is made of many minor strands ; these are twisted from the numerous threads, and these in turn have been spun from broken and carded fibres. The sheep's fleece is a unit, a matted mass that adheres and forms a whole, not because it is woven like a blanket, but because of its inter-woven confusion and tangle. There is no popular English word for a single thread of wool. Pull one lock and the whole fleece comes, not because of orderly connection, but because of disorderly tangle.

The march of a regiment is one thing, the surge of the crowd that jostles and sways us and upsets all orderly progress is another thing. The sheep is a silly creature, the only animal that would perish without the care of man, so no wonder its fleece is such a mess. The matted, tangled hair of some savages, hair plastered with mud, is comparable to the fleece, but civilized man settles the problem by clipping his head hair so that it could not tangle if it tried, settles his face hair by shaving off every vestige of it three to six times a week; but woman, more patient, with more capacity for taking pains, brushes and combs out her long locks, beginning at the ends, straightening a few inches at a time, then reaching higher up, rearranging all the parts already perfected, and so back to the head, until each of the 40,000 separate hairs lies in its own appointed place as to all the others, and all contribute to the marvelous and intricate creations that as a whole crown her lovely head. If it were not for the ideal plan the task would be hopeless. At least once a day does woman adjust her hair, the 40,000 single hairs to the general plan, and once a day should the 40,000 operations of the shop be straightened out in accordance with a general plan.

A comprehensive shop plan, graphically expressed, looks like a flattened tree. Each leaf, the separate operations, must be in order in its appointed place; each twig, with its own definite length, must reach in sequence into the main branches, these in turn being distributed at determined intervals along the main stem and trunk.

The trunk grows upwards and outwards, from the force implanted in the seed, the original ideal of the tree, but there is a reverse flow of imprisoned sunlight and captured carbon from the leaves back into the roots. The separate operations in a shop must flow into the final output ; but from the expected output backward, there must be a plan that reaches back to each detail of every operation.

It is one thing to build a battleship taking up details as they occur — the haphazard method; it is another thing to make the plan first, place all the details where they belong in time, space, relation and perfection, and have them drop into place with the accuracy of a watch movement — the difference, in fact, between the running of sand through an unstandardized aperture, and the precision of the chronometer. Good results are not achieved by chance.

If we throw four dice with the hope of turning up four aces, we find that the chances are enormously against us. I learned this practically by costly experience and then figured it out mathematically. At a German country fair the fakirs had a disk divided into twenty-two sections, alternately white and red. The sections carried numbers from 4 to 24. There were two red sections with the number 14. The cost per throw of four dice was ten cents, but every white section was a prize winner ; all the reds were losers. This looked fair, an even chance, except for the extra red 14, and as I gazed I perceived that the prizes were large, running from twenty-five cents to ten dollars. All I could possibly risk was ten cents; every other section was a prize winner and I might win ten dollars. I threw the dice again and again, but somehow or other the numbers I threw came between 9 and 19, and these were all red numbers, not anything as low as 8 or as high as 20, the lowest of the prizes. I lost the whole of the dollar that had been saved up for the day's enjoyment, for the miniature rail-road, for the circus, for the other thrillers, and then I invoked mathematics. All the possible different throws of four dice are 1,296. There is one chance in 1,296 of throwing four aces, of throwing four sixes ; there are four chances of throwing 5 or 23. There are one hundred and forty-six chances of throwing 14. The chances for the white numbers were 146, for the red numbers, 1,156. The chances against me were more than eight to one. The professional gambler wisely loads his dice so they will throw aces and sixes or at least come high. In the industrial operation the chance of the desired combination coming out of itself is just about the chance of throwing four aces.

We must imitate the professional gambler, and either select those combinations that will give us the inevitable advantage — that is, plan a board to suit — or we must load the dice so as to offset the chances against us.

There is only one game of chess. There is the board, standardized as to size, 15 to 16 inches square, just 64 squares, 32 pieces, each with its definite rights of movement. It looks like a very limited and standardized condition, yet possibilities of operation are so infinite that if all the inhabitants of the world played chess continually from now until the end of time, they could not exhaust all the variations, thus experimentally determining which was the best possible game, that one in which each player makes the best possible attacking and resistant moves, yet the total number of squares traveled is a minimum. It might be a long drawn-out game and it might be a short one — who knows, how shall we ever know? If, therefore, there is such infinite variety and possibility in chess, which has been played for centuries, how can we expect shop operations to standardize themselves ?

I have before me one volume of the standard-practice instructions covering the manufacturing of the gasoline automobile truck car. It contains 278 isometric designs or illustrations, 314 pages of printed matter, and spaces for the times and rates of 1,231 distinct operations. Each one of these operations was preceded by many designs until one was accepted as approximately good. The design was split up into its component parts, investigation made as to material of each piece, how strong it should be, what heat treatment should be given, on what machines it should be shaped, in what sequence, by which worker. As to each piece and operation many time studies are made, and finally from the mass of accurately ascertained or available information, a carefully pre-studied work-instruction card is made out. All these
items of planning must precede the time and cost ratings. Are you appalled at the mass of detail that precedes the making of a book? If we have but 100 copies to print it is cheaper, quicker, and better than manuscript duplication; if we have 3 copies to make it is better to choose the typewriter and provide carbon manifolds than to write it out by hand. If we want only 300 screws and it takes 3 hours to set up the automatic machine and only 3 minutes to run out the screws, it is better to use the automatic. A modern activity, whether the operation of an industrial shop, or a railroad, or of the turrets and guns of a battleship, is part of a gigantic, automatic machine; and it pays to plan in advance, not to trust to the haphazard.

Given the head of hair combed from child-hood, never matted with clay; the head of hair to which daily the habit of neatness, great skill, and unrelenting care is applied — and the problem is solved. Given any activity in which planning has been incorporated as a habit, and apparent difficulties fade away before patience and persistence.

Nevertheless, the difficulties are very real and there is a middle ground between the optimism that underrates them and the despair that refuses to master them. There are between 8,000 to 16,000 separate pieces in a locomotive, and each railroad in the country wants a different design. One great railroad used 256 different styles of locomotives, so that there is an appalling lack of standards; but the more reason for beginning at once.

Modern watches are marvels of intricate and perfect construction. Any child can push a stick in the ground and by the position and length of the shadow determine approximately the time. A clepsydra or water clock, an hour glass, physical material leaking away at a uniform rate, was a decided advance at guessing on the time in the dark, or the time for boiling an egg. The early clocks with their pendulum escapements required many months of experimental test before length of pendulum, meshing of wheels, amount of weight, were adjusted to one another. There are as many different kinds of watches and clocks as there are locomotives; but each is perfect with a perfection so great as to be almost inconceivable. The jewelled bearings, the almost microscopic yet mathematically perfectly shaped teeth of the wheels, the hair spring, the balance wheel, each is perfect in itself, perfectly related to the others, until the whole is also perfect. This is not all. Delicate, automatic machines are made which turn out these perfected parts so exactly alike as to be interchangeable. Turret lathes and screw machines, automatic machines in general, were earliest adapted to clock and watch making, and from that extended to larger and heavier parts, often beyond the point of economy; for in watch screws the material, even if of gold, would not amount to very much, the perfection of finish being all-important, but as the weight of material grows with the cube of its linear measurement, we cannot afford to make on automatic machines crank-pins or even knuckle-pins for locomotives, it being too expensive to cut down the
solid bar.

It would take no more thought and work to standardize operations for building a locomotive than for building a watch. The difference is that watches are turned out by the hundred thousands and locomotives only by the thousand; but this difference is not as great as it seems, for a watch movement may average $5in value and a locomotive $15,000, so that one locomotive corresponds to 3,000 watches, and as we have not hesitated to undertake the work of designing each separate locomotive part, we need not fear the labor of standardizing the operation of manufacture for each separate locomotive part.

Standardization of Printed Parameters


Another instance of standardized operation is the printing of a book. The old writers were individualists; there was no standardized operation. Each made not only the size of the letters to suit himself, but also their forms, took pride in not being like other scribes ; each spelled the words his own way, each used his stylus or brush as he preferred, preparing his own ink, his own papyrus or parchment. Now we buy half a dozen newspapers a day for a cent each, we buy a dozen magazines a week for ten cents each, we buy a hundred books a year for a dollar or two each. Scarcely any two books are alike; there is far greater variation than in locomotives or watches; but each book is made up and printed with  standardized spelling, standardized lines, standardized pages and standardized signatures; even the book itself approaches a standard in size. The ink is made to suit various fluctuations in the weather, the paper is made to suit the quality of the book in press. While printing is as yet standardized in a rudimentary way only, while it affords a field as large as any manufacturing business in the country, it has nevertheless in certain limited directions standardized operation to an advanced extent,

In the watch, in the book, we have the standardized operation as to the manner in which it shall be carried out; but there is another element — that of individual skill.

Two men may both show a model wall of brick, yet one man may have laid 3,000 bricks a day, the other man only 300.

"So true it is that one man and one intellect properly qualified for the particular undertaking is a host in itself and of extraordinary efficiency." Thus wrote Polybius, 212 B. C, in describing the work of that great engineer Archimedes, who, by his individual genius, flung rocks from catapults at the approaching besieging ships, who constructed cranes that let down grab hooks, lifted the ships out of the water, and turning them over, let them fall to destruction.

Horses have trotted and trotted well for many centuries, but it remained for Americans to figure out that the value of a minute might be rated at $3,000,000, and that to eliminate the minute, to evolve the mile-in-two-minute horse from the mile-in-three-minute horse would be worth this amount. Prizes were offered to crack trotters for beating their own record, $10,000 for the fifth of a second, and there are 300 fifths in a single minute. It was not only the horse that was developed; it was also the American stop-watch spirit, so that our fire fighters, whose every movement for men and teams has been standardized, are able to charge across the threshold of their firehouse 20 seconds after the gong has sounded. Less than the fifth of a second is said to cover the advantage of a runner to first base in modern base-ball.

At an international contest in Berlin several years ago it took the English team over two minutes and the German team over eight minutes to make a start

Now aeroplanes have come; and at the inter-national meet in Belmont, true to our national virtues and our national faults, we were prepared to time the flights to the hundredth part of a second, but with a year's warning we had no machines wherewith to fly and we lost to the foreigners because we were unprepared.

Standardization of Operation of Ship Guns Firing


Probably the most marvelous and valuable example of standardized operations anywhere in the world is on our American fleets in battle practice. The art of war has not changed as to its fundamentals since men first began to fight on land or sea. The purpose is with a stronger force to overwhelm a weaker opposing fleet, to strike first, hardest and quickest. It was Goliath's idea to pick off the Israelites one by one, and a modern pugilist could defeat a hundred men if they charged him singly, and he could down the first before the second came up. A Dreadnaught makes all the navies of the world without Dreadnaughts obsolete, because such a battleship with its ten 12-inch guns, can fire a broadside from all of them at once while steaming at 21 knots.

Such a battleship, steaming as fast as any rivals, bringing more guns into action than any rival, hitting an enemy at seven miles, could destroy the whole of an opposing fleet one by one, even as the pugilist would take the lighter weights one by one. But the horse-trotting, fire-fighting American stop-watch practice is also in the Navy, and it was realized that if these big guns could be fired four times as fast, it would be very nearly the same as having four times as many guns or four times as many Dreadnaughts, and also that if the skill of aim could be increased four-fold, if four shots would reach the target as compared to one in the older practice, one modern Arkansas or Wyoming, with twelve 12-inch guns, firing four times as fast and hitting four times as often, will, for the time being at least, be sixteen
times as effective. These big guns are loaded, aimed, and fired twice in a minute. The practice drill is only half this time, and this practice drill is of two kinds. There is the physical act of loading the heavy gun, there is the more important act of pointing it. Two opposing ships are 10,000 yards apart (about 6 miles) steaming at 18 knots in diverging directions. The rate of change of range may be 750 yards a minute. If the range is set for every 50 yards, it must be redetermined every 4 seconds. This is impossible, but it can be determined every 30 seconds and a salvo be fired every 30 seconds. Being able to determine the range twice a minute, to fire twice a minute, the remaining part is drill in pointing or aiming, and this is done by means of much practice with models. To hit a target 60 feet wide and 30 feet high at 30,000 feet with a big gun, when you can cover it twice over by the point of a lead pencil at arm's length, is considerably harder than to hit a target 1 inch high at 83 feet with a small gun ; but it is much better and much cheaper to fire 1,000 shots with the small gun than to fire the big gun once, and when the big gun is fired four times in practice, after training with small apparatus, it will do better than if firing 100 real shots without the model practice.

In the battle practice I saw the first 12-inch range-finding shot, from a distance of 14,000 yards, go clean through a 30 by 60 target ; and so accurate and secure was the aim of all the salvos that we calmly watched the shots splash all around the floating target only 400 yards away. The firing end was not less impressive. The team work was so perfect that the salvos from the same ship were redirected one after
the other almost with the ease with which a child swings a garden hose.

I have also watched diminutive and juvenile Igorot savages shoot dimes from a forked stick at 60 feet with bow and arrow. The Igorots show us the beginnings of offensive skill; modern American battleship target practice shows us the highest speed, accuracy, and distance yet attained, and we may not doubt that our present achievement is but a step in man's ultimate achievement.

The improvement in the effectiveness of the different ships of the Navy in the last five years is very great, and is probably the greatest improvement both in importance and magnitude that has ever been accomplished. Think of the small degree to which the steam turbine is superior to the reciprocating engine (a questionable 5 per cent), or how very little faster the best passenger trains are than the slowest of the same class (about 25 per cent). Think of the enormous expense in time and money spent in developing either steam turbines or high-speed trains — then think of the sixteen-fold increased efficiency of our battleships as compared to five years ago, an increased efficiency due to the application of the principles of efficiency — all of them — Ideals, Common Sense, Competent Counsel, Discipline, the Fair Deal, Reliable and Immediate Records, Schedules (of 10,000 yards), Despatching (of big shot at the rate of ten or twelve a minute), Standardized Conditions, Standardized Operation (secured by constant and assiduous team drill), most minute Standard-Practice Instructions (as to how fifths of seconds can be saved in time); finally, a joyful and much coveted Efficiency Reward, in both honor and emolument, when the tremendous results have been accomplished. And when this appears not only in the spectacular gunnery, but also in the more prosaic but continuously important operations of firing coal; of coaling ship (the record as to this having increased from 30 tons an hour to 360 tons an hour on some of the ships for the whole cruise around the world); of the maintenance of operation of machinery on board ship without going to Navy yards — these accomplishments show that high efficiency requires neither great outlay nor protracted time, but only the proper intelligence, spirit, and organization. The seagoing form of organization is admirably adapted to apply the principles, since a gun drill, a coal drill, a re-coaling drill, is but a practical and modern form of drill. The ideal is not a mere dress parade, but to hit accurately, fast, and furiously, at the greatest distance, an enemy's ship overtaken by better management throughout; and this ideal has been accomplished, stop watch in hand refining all the conditions and operations, this refinement made possible by bringing to bear all the available knowledge in the universe. This Navy work is a great game, not drudgery ; it is pleasurable excitement and joyously hard work.

Thus gradually, from all sides — from the watch and sewing-machine and typewriter factory, from the race-track, from the fire-fighters, from the manipulation of the big 12-inch guns, from schedules, despatching, standardized conditions and standardized operation in some shops — the methods of efficiency are spreading.

Planning pays; the application of all the principles of efficiency pays; but standardized operation is the principle that most appeals to the individuality of the man, of the worker. Ideals are passive, common-sense is passive, planning in all its phases is passive, but standardized operation becomes an individual joy with its wealth of active manifestation.

Let none hesitate because we cannot standardize each new operation. We cannot standardize every errand boy's every trip ; we cannot standardize every naval battle; but we can so inspire both errand boy and admiral that each will always do his best, we can give them training, knowledge, help, and incentive; and if we do this for them and for all other workers, even though we cannot drill and redrill as to the performance of the occasional operation, we can be absolutely sure that no savable time will be wasted nor effort lost in performing it.

Commentary by KVSSNRao

Planning pays; the application of all the principles of efficiency pays; but standardized operation is the principle that most appeals to the individuality of the man, of the worker. Ideals are passive, common-sense is passive, planning in all its phases is passive, but standardized operation becomes an individual joy with its wealth of active manifestation.


Ud  13.10.2024, 11.12.2021, 11.11.2021
Pub 3.10.2013