Various methods have been adopted and used for this purpose. Some of the more prominent plans will be given. They are each adapted to some certain kind or class of work, and it will often be found that in practice still different forms must be devised in order to meet the existing conditions.
There are three methods of recording the time of employees—namely:
1. By entering the time in a book or upon cards, by a Time-Keeper.
2. By entering the time upon cards by the workman himself.
3. By stamping the time upon cards by the workman in a time-recording clock.
The first of these methods is the oldest form, and has now to a great extent gone out of use.
Fig. 9. Pattern Shop Time Card.
A large majority of the work of a manufacturing plant requires that the time worked by the employees shall be registered twice. That is, one entry shall be of the day time (time paid for by the day), which necessitates the recording of the total number of hours worked each day; the second entry shall record the job time (the time worked upon the different jobs during the day). This second entry is sometimes called Time Distribution, since the employee's time is distributed over the different jobs upon which he has worked.
Time-Card Forms. This work is sometimes done by means of time cards as shown in Figs. 9, 10, 11, and 12, which are given as characteristic examples of these methods. These cards are of different tints as a convenient method of recognizing them.