Shop Management

by Frederick Winslow Taylor

Time and Cost Clerk. This man sends to the men through the "time ticket" all the information they need for recording their time and the cost of the work, and secures proper returns from them. He refers these for entry to the cost and time record clerks in the planning room.

Shop Disciplinarian. In case of insubordination or impudence, repeated failure to do their duty, lateness or unexcused absence, the shop disciplinarian takes the workman or bosses in hand and applies the proper remedy. He sees that a complete record of each man's virtues and defects is kept. This man should also have much to do with readjusting the wages of the workmen. At the very least, he should invariably be consulted before any change is made. One of his important functions should be that of peace-maker.

Thus, under functional foremanship, we see that the work which, under the military type of organization, was done by the single gang boss, is subdivided among eight men: (1) route clerks, (2) instruction card clerks, (3) cost and time clerks, who plan and give directions from the planning room; (4) gang bosses, (5) speed bosses, (6) inspectors, (7) repair bosses, who show the men how to carry out their instructions, and see that the work is done at the proper speed; and (8) the shop disciplinarian, who performs this function for the entire establishment.

The greatest good resulting from this change is that it becomes possible in a comparatively short time to train bosses who can really and fully perform the functions demanded of them, while under the old system it took years to train men who were after all able to thoroughly perform only a portion of their duties. A glance at the nine qualities needed for a well rounded man and then at the duties of these functional foremen will show that each of these men requires but a limited number of the nine qualities in order to successfully fill his position; and that the special knowledge which he must acquire forms only a small part of that needed by the old style gang boss. The writer has seen men taken (some of them from the ranks of the workmen, others from the old style bosses and others from among the graduates of industrial schools, technical schools and colleges) and trained to become efficient functional foremen in from six to eighteen months. Thus it becomes possible with functional foremanship to thoroughly and completely equip even a new company starting on a large scale with competent officers in a reasonable time, which is entirely out of the question under the old system. Another great advantage resulting from functional or divided foremanship is that it becomes entirely practicable to apply the four leading principles of management to the bosses as well as to the workmen. Each foreman can have a task assigned him which is so accurately measured that he will be kept fully occupied and still will daily be able to perform his entire function. This renders it possible to pay him high wages when he is successful by giving him a premium similar to that offered the men and leave him with low pay when he fails.

The full possibilities of functional foremanship, however, will not have been realized until almost all of the machines in the shop are run by men who are of smaller calibre and attainments, and who are therefore cheaper than those required under the old system. The adoption of standard tools, appliances, and methods throughout the shop, the planning done in the planning room and the detailed instructions sent them from this department, added to the direct help received from the four executive bosses, permit the use of comparatively cheap men even on complicated work. Of the men in the machine shop of the Bethlehem Steel Company engaged in running the roughing machines, and who were working under the bonus system when the writer left them, about 95 per cent were handy men trained up from laborers. And on the finishing machines, working on bonus, about 25 per cent were handy men.

To fully understand the importance of the work which was being done by these former laborers, it must be borne in mind that a considerable part of their work was very large and expensive. The forgings which they were engaged in roughing and finishing weighed frequently many tons. Of course they were paid more than laborer's wages, though not as much as skilled machinists. The work in this shop was most miscellaneous in its nature.

Functional foremanship is already in limited use in many of the best managed shops. A number of managers have seen the practical good that arises from allowing two or three men especially trained in their particular lines to deal directly with the men instead of at second hand through the old style gang boss as a mouthpiece. So deep rooted, however, is the conviction that the very foundation of management rests in the military type as represented by the principle that no workman can work under two bosses at the same time, that all of the managers who are making limited use of the functional plan seem to feel it necessary to apologize for or explain away their use of it; as not really in this particular case being a violation of that principle. The writer has never yet found one, except among the works which he had assisted in organizing, who came out squarely and acknowledged that he was using functional foremanship because it was the right principle.

The writer introduced five of the elements of functional foremanship into the management of the small machine shop of the Midvale Steel Company of Philadelphia while he was foreman of that shop in 1882-1883: (1) the instruction card clerk, (2) the time clerk, (3) the inspector, (4) the gang boss, and (5) the shop disciplinarian. Each of these functional foremen dealt directly with the workmen instead of giving their orders through the gang boss. The dealings of the instruction card clerk and time clerk with the workmen were mostly in writing, and the writer himself performed the functions of shop disciplinarian, so that it was not until he introduced the inspector, with orders to go straight to the men instead of to the gang boss, that he appreciated the desirability of functional foremanship as a distinct principle in management. The prepossession in favor of the military type was so strong with the managers and owners of Midvale that it was not until years after functional foremanship was in continual use in this shop that he dared to advocate it to his superior officers as the correct principle.

Until very recently in his organization of works he has found it best to first introduce five or six of the elements of functional foremanship quietly, and get them running smoothly in a shop before calling attention to the principle involved. When the time for this announcement comes, it invariably acts as the proverbial red rag on the bull. It was some years later that the writer subdivided the duties of the "old gang boss" who spent his whole time with the men into the four functions of (1) speed boss, (2) repair boss, (3) inspector, and (4) gang boss, and it is the introduction of these four shop bosses directly helping the men (particularly that of the speed boss) in place of the single old boss, that has produced the greatest improvement in the shop.

When functional foremanship is introduced in a large shop, it is desirable that all of the bosses who are performing the same function should have their own foreman over them; for instance, the speed bosses should have a speed foreman over them, the gang bosses, a head gang boss; the inspectors, a chief inspector, etc., etc. The functions of these over-foremen are twofold. The first part of their work is to teach each of the bosses under them the exact nature of his duties, and at the start, also to nerve and brace them up to the point of insisting that the workmen shall carry out the orders exactly as specified on the instruction cards. This is a difficult task at first, as the workmen have been accustomed for years to do the details of the work to suit themselves, and many of them are intimate friends of the bosses and believe they know quite as much about their business as the latter. The second function of the over-foreman is to smooth out the difficulties which arise between the different types of bosses who in turn directly help the men. The speed boss, for instance, always follows after the gang boss on any particular job in taking charge of the workmen. In this way their respective duties come in contact edgeways, as it were, for a short time, and at the start there is sure to be more or less friction between the two. If two of these bosses meet with a difficulty which they cannot settle, they send for their respective over-foremen, who are usually able to straighten it out. In case the latter are unable to agree on the remedy, the case is referred by them to the assistant superintendent, whose duties, for a certain time at least, may consist largely in arbitrating such difficulties and thus establishing the unwritten code of laws by which the shop is governed. This serves as one example of what is called the "exception principle" in management, which is referred to later.