Therefore, respect your own ability. The manager who cannot improve upon methods used by his men is not fit to manage.
Profit Does Not Mean Excellence. Many a manager points to the profits of his business as the profit of his ability. He forgets that to a plainsman a small hill looks like a mountain. The general level of mediocrity makes such managers fancy that they are quite extraordinary if their business shows a large profit.
The Cost-Analysis Engineer can frequently take a profitable business and convert it into a wealth-producer beyond all dreams of the ordinary self-satisfied manager. Nor should the Cost-Analysis Engineer himself grow satisfied. There is positively no limit to the economies in production which may be effected by the human brain.
The Human Engine. The human body is an engine, or rather a boiler and engine combined. Its fuel is about 3 pounds of solid food daily, containing about as much energy as one pound of carbon or coal. One pound of coal will develop energy enough to perform about 10,000,000 foot-pounds of work; that is, it will raise 10,000,000 pounds one foot high, if there is no loss of power. But in all boilers and engines there is a loss of power, due to heat lost by radiation, heat carried away in the escaping gases and solids, etc., and heat developed by friction. A steam boiler and engine suffers so much loss of heat energy from these sources, that it rarely develops an efficiency of more than 10 per cent of the theoretical energy of the coal consumed. Curiously enough, the human body is not much more efficient than a steam boiler and engine; so that, while the one pound of carbon fed into the human body has a theoretical energy of about 10,000,000 foot-pounds, the actual useful work performed by a man is seldom more than 1,500,000 foot-pounds a day, or about 15 per cent of the theoretical energy of the food consumed.
When a man is walking, his whole body rises and falls each step, the rise being about one-seventh of a foot. Hence, in walking 25 miles in a day, about 2,000 steps per mile, a man weighing 140 pounds does 1,000,000 foot-pounds of work in raising the weight of his own body, to say nothing of the energy consumed in swinging his legs. A man may walk the 25 miles in 10 hours, or he may walk it in 8 hours. In either case, he does substantially the same amount of work, and burns up substantially the same amount of food.
It should be clear, therefore, that when workmen are doing intermittent work, with periods of comparative rest, they are capable of working correspondingly harder during the periods of exertion. Thus, in running a rock drill, the physical labor is light, except when shifting the drill or when changing drill bits. At such times, the men should be required to work with great vigor in order to reduce the lost time.
It should also be clear that workmen should be taught to make no unnecessary movements of the body in doing work. Yet it is a fact that few workmen economize their energy by avoiding unnecessary motions.
It should also be clear that it pays to house workmen at no great distance from their work, so as to reduce the labor of going to and from the work; for every foot-pound of energy spent in going or coming reduces by that much the available energy of the man.
If it were practicable to measure the amount of resistance involved in doing each class of physical work, we could readily reduce to a science the setting of reasonable daily tasks. The authors are of the opinion that a careful study of resistances will eventually enable managers to fix certain tasks with great accuracy. To illustrate, let us assume that it is desired to know how much sand a workman should be able to shovel into a wagon box 5 feet from the ground in a day. It is not impracticable to measure the force required to push the shovel into the sand, and the distance pushed. The average weight of the earth on a shovel, and the weight of the shovel can be ascertained. The vertical height that this load is lifted, is easily measured. If the workman bends his body to fill the shovel, the weight of his body above the waist, multiplied by the height that the center of gravity of that weight travels will give the foot-pounds of work done in bending the body. And thus, by a calculation of each element of work done, an accurate forecast of the total possible work could be made.
Such a study as this will often disclose an unsuspected lack of economy in using certain tools. From such a study, for example, it is perfectly clear that the long-handled shovel, universally used in the far West for shoveling sand, gravel, etc., is a more economical tool than the short-handled shovel used in the East. Men have argued about this matter for years without coming to a definite conclusion, the reason being that workmen accustomed to the short-handled shovel prefer it, while workmen accustomed to the long-handled shovel show an equal preference for that type of tool.