Starting Your Own Fatigue Museum.
We advise every employer to set aside a small space and assemble at least one example of each type of fatigue eliminating device actually in use, or that may suggest a device to be used. In the absence of a regular motion study man assigned for the purpose, the ideal state of affairs would be to have every member of the management walk through the factory once and look at present fatigue conditions in order to see what improvements could be made. This, however, is almost too Utopian to hope for.
It is the exception where the worker in any large plant knows intimately any part of the plant except the few little work places where he has toiled. A girl who had worked for years in a cotton mill, and who finally went into household work, begged to be taken on a visit of inspection to the factory. “But,” said the woman who was to make the inspection, “I thought you worked there. Surely, you must know about the factory.” “No, indeed,” said the girl, “I never went anywhere except to get into the room where the machine was that I tended.” Even in one excellently managed plant where welfare, or betterment, is a prime consideration, a girl in the office department had never once been out into the plant itself. There is an enormous amount of educational work, that is also fatigue eliminating work, to be done in putting each member of the organization in touch with the entire working plant. There is not time or space, however, for an extended discussion of this problem here.
Therefore, until the workers can be taken to see the fatigue eliminating devices in actual operation, collect such devices, or photographs of them, and put them all in one place. Start a little fatigue museum of your own, even if it is limited to a properly labelled scrap-book of pictures always ready for inspection, and observe the effect upon management, workers, and invention in general. This effect will be reflected in the suggestion box, which in itself provides a unit of measurement of the progress of the fatigue eliminating campaign. When fatigue elimination has progressed to this stage, when actual devices are being installed, when the entire organization has come, as it will, to think in terms of fatigue elimination, the problem may be attacked scientifically. This, the scientific elimination of unnecessary fatigue, is the subject for discussion in the next chapters.