Lesson 15 of Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course - IE Concepts Module - Contribution of Taylor, Gilbreth, Emerson, Maynard, Barnes, Shigeo Shingo.
Levels of Industrial Engineering in Engineering Organizations.
F.W. Taylor: The advantages of the productivity improvement system of management proposed by me in this paper are :
The manufactures are produced cheaper under it.
The system is rapid in attaining the maximum productivity of each machine and man
The proposal was made in:
TAYLOR, F. W., "A Piece-Rate System, Being a Step Toward Partial Solution of the Labor Problem,"
Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 16, 856-903, 1895
Taylor explained the system of management introduced by him in the works of the Midvale Steel Company, of Philadelphia, which has been employed by them during the past ten years to increase productivity, reduce costs and pay higher wages to workmen in a paper in 1895.
In elementary rate-fixing procedure, a careful study is made of the time required to do each of the many elementary operations into which the manufacturing of an establishment may be analyzed or divided. Each of these elementary operations is studied to develop of productivity science, that science that helps us to explain the taken for completing the operation. From this science the input variables that give the minimum time can be ascertained or determined. Engineering of the element can be done to realize the minimum time. This is productivity engineering. A database of these highly productive elements can be developed. We can also think of a database of various alternative ways doing an element and the time taken for that alternative.
These redesigned elementary operations (database) are then classified, recorded, and indexed, and when work is to be done, the job is first divided into its elementary operations, the feasible elementary operations are selected and the time required to do each elementary operation is found from the records, and the total time for the job is summed up from these data. This is the estimate of minimum time in which the job can be done giving maximum productivity. This method is more effective than the old method of recording the time required to do whole jobs of work, and then, after looking over the records of similar jobs, guessing at the time required for any new piece of work.
The advantages of this system of management are :
First. That the manufactures are produced cheaper under it and the workmen are given opportunity of earning higher wages through increased production per day (Workmen who produce the item in the minimum time get additional productivity reward).
Second. Since the rate-fixing or time-fixing is done from accurate knowledge instead of more or less by guess-work, the management and the men can cooperate in every way, so as to turn out each day the maximum quantity and best quality of work because a genuine plan of production is used based on accurate knowledge.
Third. The system is rapid, while other systems are slow, in attaining the maximum productivity of each machine and man.
Finally. One of the chief advantages derived from the above effects of the system is, that it promotes a most friendly feeling between the men and their employers.
Some important points about production management
1. Capital demands fully twice the return for money placed in manufacturing enterprises that it does for real estate or transportation ventures. And this probably represents the difference in the risk between these classes of investments.
2. Among the risks of a manufacturing business, there is risk of bad management also ; and of the three managing departments, the commercial, the financiering, and the productive, the latter, in most cases, receives the least attention from those that have invested their money in the business, and contains the greatest elements of risk. This risk arises from the daily more insidious and fatal failure on the part of the superintendents to secure anything even approaching the maximum work from their machines and men.
3. It is not unusual for the manager of a manufacturing business to go most minutely into every detail of the buying and selling and financiering, and arrange every element of these branches in the most systematic manner and according to principles that have been carefully planned to insure the business against almost any contingency which may' arise, while the manufacturing is turned over to a superintendent or foreman, with little or no restrictions as to the principles and methods which he is to pursue, either in the management of the care of the company’s plant or production men.
4. But some modern manufacturers, however, seek not only to secure the best superintendents and workmen, but to surround each department of his manufacture with the most carefully woven network of system and method, which should render the business, for a considerable period at least, independent of the loss of any one man, and frequently of any combination of men.
5. It is the lack of this system and method which, in the judgment of the writer, constitutes the greatest risk in manufacturing; placing, as it frequently does, the success of the business at the hazard of the health or whims of a few employees.
6. Even after fully realizing the importance of adopting the best possible system and methods of management for securing a proper return, there are difficulties in the problem of selecting methods of management which shall be adequate to the purpose, and yet be free from red tape, and inexpensive.
7. The literature on the subject is meagre, especially that which comes from men of practical experience and observation. And the problem is usually solved, after but little investigation, by the adoption of the system with which the managers are most familiar, or by taking a system which has worked well in similar lines of manufacture.
8. The elementary system of fixing production times has been in successful operation for the past ten years, on work complicated in its nature and covering almost as wide a range of variety as any manufacturing that the writer knows of. In 1883, while foreman of the machine shop of the Midvale Steel Company of Philadelphia, it occurred to the writer that it was simpler to time each of the elements of the various kinds of work done in the place, and then find the quickest time in which each job could be done, by summing up the total times of its component parts, than it was to search through the records of former jobs. After practising this method of rate-fixing himself for about a year as well as circumstances would permit, it became evident that the system was a success. The writer then established the rate-fixing department, which has given out piece-work times with higher productivity built into them in the place ever since.
9. This department far more than paid for itself from the very start ; but it was several years before the full benefits of the system were felt, owing to the fact that methods determining the machine time for a cut on a machine using the maximum capacity of each of the machines and of making and recording time observations of work done by the men were not available and have to be developed.
It is the writer’s opinion that a more complicated and difficult piece of rate-fixing could not be found than that of determining the proper time for doing all kinds of machine work on miscellaneous steel and iron castings and forgings, which vary in their chemical composition from the softest iron to the hardest tool steel. Yet this problem was solved through the rate-fixing department. At the same time the quality of the work was improved and the output of the machinery and the men was doubled, and in many cases trebled. At the start there was naturally great opposition to the rate fixing department, particularly to the man who was taking time observations of the various elements of the work ; but when the men found that the times were fixed without regard to the records of the quickest time in which they had actually done each job, and that the knowledge of the time study men was more accurate than their own they cooperated.
Practically, the greatest need felt in an establishment wishing to start a rate-fixing department is the lack of data as to the proper rate of speed at which work should be done by machines as well as men.
The system of differential rates was first applied by the writer to a part of the work in the machine shop of the Midvale Steel Company, in 1884. Its effect in increasing and then maintaining the output of each machine to which it was applied was almost immediate, and so remarkable that it soon came into high favor with both the men and the management. It was gradually applied to a great part of the work of the establishment, with the result, in combination with the rate-fixing department, of doubling and in many cases trebling the output, and at the same time increasing instead of diminishing the accuracy of the work.
The benefits of determining the maximum speed at which machines can be run include indirect results.
The careful study of the capabilities of the machines and the analysis of the speeds at which they must run, almost invariably result in first indicating and then correcting the defects in their design and in the method of running and caring for them.
In the case of the Midvale Steel Company, the machine shop was equipped with standard tools furnished by the best makers, and the study of these machines, such as lathes, planers, boring mills, etc., which was made in fixing rates, developed the fact that they were none of them designed and speeded so as to cut steel to the best advantage. As a result, this company has demanded alterations from the standard in almost every machine which they have bought during the past eight years. They have themselves been obliged to superintend the design of many special tools which would not have been thought of had it not been for elementary rate-fixing.
But what is perhaps of more importance still, the rate-fixing department has shown the necessity of carefully systematizing all of the small details in the running of each shop, such as the care of belting, the proper shape for cutting tools, and the dressing, grinding, and issuing tools, oiling machines, issuing orders for work, obtaining accurate labor and material returns, and a host of other minor methods and processes. These details, which are usually regarded as of comparatively small importance, and many of which are left to the individual judgment of the foreman and workmen, are shown by the rate-fixing department to be of paramount importance in obtaining the maximum output, and to require the most careful and systematic study and attention in order to insure uniformity and a fair and equal chance for each workman. Without this preliminary study and systematizing of details it is impossible to apply successfully increase the productivity and pay higher wages through the differential rate in most establishments.
The success of this system of productivity improvement depends fundamentally upon the possibility of materially increasing the output per man and per machine, providing the proper man be found for each job and the proper incentive be offered to him.
The first case in which a differential rate was applied furnishes a good illustration of what can be accomplished by it.
A standard steel forging, many thousands of which are used each year, had for several years been turned at the rate of from four to five per day under the ordinary system of piece-work, 50 cents per piece being the price paid for the work. After analyzing the job and determining the shortest time required to do each of the elementary operations of which it was composed, and then summing up the total, the writer became convinced that it was possible to turn ten pieces a day. To finish the forgings at this rate, however, the machinists have to run lathes as fast as the tools would allow, and under a heavy feed.
It was a big day’s work, both for men and machines, when it is understood that it involved removing, with a single 16-inch lathe having two saddles, an average of more than 800 pounds of steel chips in ten hours. In place of the 50-cent rate that they had been paid before, they were given 35 cents per piece when they turned them at the speed of 10 per day, and when they produced less than 10 they received only 25 cents per piece.
It took considerable trouble to induce the men to turn at this high speed, since they did not at first fully appreciate that it was the intention of the firm to allow them to earn permanently at the rate of $3.50 per day. But from the day they first turned 10 pieces to the present time, a period of more than ten years, the men who understood their work have scarcely failed a single day to turn at this rate. Throughout that time, until the beginning of the recent fall in the scale of wages throughout the country, the rate was not cut.
It is his opinion that the most successful manufacturers, those who are always ready to adopt the best machinery and methods when they see them, will gradually avail themselves of the benefits of scientific rate-fixing ; and that competition will compel the others to follow slowly in the same direction.
The utmost effect of any system, whether of management, social combination, or legislation, can be but to raise a small ripple or wave of prosperity above the surrounding level, and the greatest hope of the writer is that here and there a few workmen, with their employers, may be helped through this system toward the crest of the wave.
Process - Elementary Operations - Analysis
In elementary rate-fixing procedure, a careful study is made of the time required to do each of the many elementary operations into which the manufacturing of an establishment may be analyzed or divided. - F.W. Taylor
Gilbreth proposed process chart having various operations as the visual picture to understand the process.
ASME standardized the operations in process charts as Operation (Processing) - Inspection - Transport - Delays - Storage.
In each operation, there are elements.
Some of the Elements Analyzed in IE Studies for Productivity Improvement
51
Machine Tools - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
52
Machining Cutting Tools - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
53
Machine Tool Toolholders - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
54
Metal Cutting Temperatures - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
55
Machining Process Simulation - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Analysis
56
Cutting Tool Wear and Tool Life Analysis - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
57
Surface Finish - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
58
Work Material - Machinability - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
59
Machine Rigidity - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
60
Machining Time Reduction - Machining Cost Reduction - Industrial Engineering of Machining Operations
61
Machine Tool Cutting Fluids - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
62
High Speed Machining - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
63
Design for Machining - Industrial Engineering and Productivity Aspects
TAYLOR'S INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING - PROF. DIEMER
Prof. Hugo Diemer started the industrial engineering course first in an engineering institution in the 1908.
Mr. Taylor is the earliest and foremost advocate of engineering management and industrial engineering. Taylor's contribution to production management is well known though his works shop management and scientific management. His contribution to industrial engineering is not that direct through specific works. But he is credited as the father of industrial engineering as his ideas and works became industrial engineering in practice and theory.
According to Diemer, as early as 1889, Mr. Taylor earnestly pleaded that shop statistics and cost data should be more than mere records, and that they in themselves constituted but a small portion of the field of investigation to be covered by the industrial engineer. Taylor's conception of factory management can be summarized as this:
According to Diemer, as early as 1889, Mr. Taylor earnestly pleaded that shop statistics and cost data should be more than mere records, and that they in themselves constituted but a small portion of the field of investigation to be covered by the industrial engineer. Taylor's conception of factory management can be summarized as this:
He considers a manufacturing establishment just as one would an intricate machine. He analyzes each process into its ultimate, simple elements, and compares each of these simplest steps or processes with an ideal or perfect condition. He then makes all due allowances for rational and practical conditions and establishes an attainable commercial standard for every step. The next process is that of attaining continuously this standard, involving both quality and quantity, and the interlocking or assembling of all of these prime elements into a well-arranged, well-built, smooth-running machine. It is quite evident that work of this character involves technical knowledge and ability in science and pure engineering, which do not enter into the field of the accountant. Hence the role of engineers is factory management is very important and significant.
It is the industrial engineer who takes up the responsibility of identifying the ideal or perfect condition of each engineering element periodically and takes steps to adopt in the factory or the organization. The industrial engineer must have the accountant's and economist's keen perception of money values. His work will not be good engineering unless he uses good business judgment. He must be able to select those mechanical devices and perfect such organization as will best suit present customer (stakeholder) needs and secure prompt returns in profit. He must have sufficiently good business sense to appreciate the ratio between investment and income.
It is the industrial engineer who takes up the responsibility of identifying the ideal or perfect condition of each engineering element periodically and takes steps to adopt in the factory or the organization. The industrial engineer must have the accountant's and economist's keen perception of money values. His work will not be good engineering unless he uses good business judgment. He must be able to select those mechanical devices and perfect such organization as will best suit present customer (stakeholder) needs and secure prompt returns in profit. He must have sufficiently good business sense to appreciate the ratio between investment and income.
Updated on 27.4.2022, 24 Dec 2021, 21 Jan 2021, 27 May 2020
First published on 22 May 2020
2 June 2020 Lesson of Industrial Engineering ONLINE Course
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