Efficiency expert

“ Call International Machine Company, West Superior Street. Ask for Mr. Compton.
“What do you have to know to be an efficiency expert?” asked the girl.
“From what I saw of the bird I just mentioned the less one knows about anything the more successful he should be as an efficiency expert, for he certainly didn’t know anything. And yet the results from kicking everybody in the plant out of his own particular rut eventually worked wonders for the organization. If the man had had any sense, tact or diplomacy nothing would have been accomplished.” ”

“ Thursday morning Jimmy took up his duties as efficiency expert at the plant of the International Machine Company. Since his interview with Compton his constant companion had been “How to Get More Out of Your Factory,” with the result that he felt that unless he happened to be pitted against another efficiency expert he could at least make a noise like efficiency, and also he had grasped what he considered the fundamental principle of efficiency, namely, simplicity. ”

“ What else can you do?” she asked smiling up at him.
“I can drive a milk-wagon,” said Jimmy, “but the drivers are all on strike.”
“Now, be serious,” she announced. “Let’s look for something really good. Here’s somebody wants a finishing superintendent for a string music instrument factory, and a business manager and electrical engineer in this one. What’s an efficiency expert?” ”

“ The efficiency of the control exercised by the master-workman, engineer, superintendent, or whatever term may be used to designate the technological expert who controls and correlates the productive processes,—this workmanlike efficiency determines how far the given material equipment is effectually to be rated as "capital goods." ”

“ His companion made no comment, but resumed her reading of the advertisement before her:
WANTED, an Efficiency Expert—Machine works wants man capable of thoroughly reorganizing large business along modern lines, stopping leaks and systematizing every activity. ”

“ We hear much, in these latter days, of business and industrial efficiency. Experts in this line are able to systematize a business, a railroad, or a factory so that a given amount of labor will produce a maximum of results. Even such unskilled labor as shoveling is susceptible of scientific improvement. An efficiency expert employed by a great corporation decreased the number of movements of ore shovelers one-half, with a corresponding increase in tonnage of ore handled, and without an increase in the expenditure of physical energy. ”

“ CHAPTER X THE RATE OF IMPROVEMENT IN EFFICIENCY NO novice develops suddenly into an expert. Nevertheless the progress made by beginners is often astounding. The executive with experience is not deceived by the showing made by new men. He has learned to accept rapid initial progress, but he does not assume that this initial rate of increase will be sustained. ”

“ Some men have that within them which spurs them on; while some need artificial initiative—outside encouragement,” he quoted glibly from “How to Get More Out of Your Factory.” “Some men extend themselves under stern discipline; some respond only to a gentle rein. I study men—the men over me, under me, around me. I study them and learn how to get from each the most that is in him. At the same time I shall be looking for leaks and investigating timekeeping methods, wage-paying systems and planning on efficiency producers. ”

“ It is then the duty of these efficiency engineers to present the results so obtained, for the conviction and guidance of the businessmen in charge, who thereupon, if their business training has left them enough of a sense of workmanship, will give permissive instructions to the expert workmen in direct charge of the industrial processes to put these statistically indicated changes into effect. ”

“ Efficiency experts maintain that the average employee in our industrial and commercial institutions is only from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent, efficient. Sixty-five to seventy-five per cent, loss in productive power on the part of the forty million workers in this country constitutes an almost incalculable sum. ”

“ Business standards must be discussed from the standpoint of efficiency, but efficiency needs to be interpreted. We may as well admit at the start that the efficiency ideal is not entirely in good repute at this moment.1 If I may import an expression from England, we have been somewhat "fed up" with efficiency during the recent past and the ration has been rather too much for our digestion. ”

“ Our perception of efficiency, therefore, is correct only in proportion to the precision of the standard, which must be accurately developed from data which are not only exact, but complete. A machinist, believed to be operating at high efficiency, was observed while turning a shaft. ”

“ The grade of "industrial efficiency" recently introduced serves as a further incentive to skill and industry and will secure special recommendation for efficiency when the men are free to take their own places in the world. ”

“ No one can be found who will deny that in the case of any single individual the greatest prosperity can exist only when that individual has reached his highest state of efficiency; that is, when he is turning out his largest daily output. ”

“ Managers of industrial enterprises will undoubtedly agree that there are few qualities which are more to be desired in equipment, methods and men than that of efficiency. From an extensive study of this subject in various parts of the country, together with interviews and correspondence with several hundred concerns, the writer has become convinced that there is a general lack of definite comprehension of what efficiency is, whence it springs, how it may be measured and developed and the results which its cultivation will produce. ”

“ So far has this predilection made its way in the counsels of the "educators" that much of the current discussion of desideranda in academic policy reads like controversial argument on "efficiency engineering," -- an "efficiency engineer" is an accountant competent to advise business concerns how best to increase their saleable output per unit of cost. ”

“ Therefore it is for her to see what scientific management means to all these other institutions and to apply the lesson to her own realm, and make that factory of hers, that workshop, regiment, and studio, into the most efficient place upon earth!
The great movement in the interest of efficiency has its origin in the desire to get just as much result as possible out of the labor of the workers. Their strength must be conserved, not because of any philanthropic feeling for the man, but because that strength is needed for further use, in order that a greater output of the product may be gained. ”

“ Many large commercial houses give new employees regular courses in company methods before intrusting work to them; the instructor is some highly efficient specialist, who shows the beginner *how to get output and quality with the least expenditure of time and energy. ”

“ In order to accomplish all this in, say, the business and work of a factory, there must be an efficiency engineer, who shall spend days and weeks and months in finding out what the right order of motions is, what the best arrangement of the tools and materials shall be, what elimination of unnecessary acts and things can be made in order that every possible waste of energy may be pared off and the path to the end may be absolutely, sternly direct. ”

“ This question, like the one that precedes it, is answered by Scientific Management. It has demonstrated that the emphasis in successful management lies on the man, not on the work; that efficiency is best secured by placing the emphasis on the man, and modifying the equipment, materials and methods to make the most of the man. It has, further, recognized that the man's mind is a controlling factor in his efficiency, and has, by teaching, enabled the man to make the most of his powers. ”

“ This involves not only fixing for each man his daily task, but also paying him a large bonus, or premium, each time that he succeeds in doing his task in the given time. It is difficult to appreciate in full measure the help which the proper use of these two elements is to the workman in elevating him to the highest standard of efficiency and speed in his trade, and then keeping him there, unless one has seen first the old plan and afterward the new tried upon the same man. ”

“ The relation of cause and effect, as commonly conceived by the vulgar and as commonly employed by the scientist, is a putative relation between phenomena which can not be said to stand in any observed relation of efficiency to one another. Efficiency, as understood in this connection, is not a fact of observation, but of imputation; and efficiency, performance of work, is the substance of the causal relation as that concept is universally employed in modern science. ”

“ Business managers, it was made plain, are coming more and more to depend upon imitation as one of the great forces in securing a maximum of efficiency without risking the rupture or rebellion which might follow if the same efficiency were sought by force or by any method of conscious compulsion. ”

“ This is the purpose for which the unit exists. Efficiency is the product of the individual activity of the group members, and of the working effectiveness of the mechanism with which they accomplish their tasks. Thus both are essential to efficiency in production. ”

“ The more proficient the workmen in their mastery of the technological expedients involved, and the greater the facility with which they are able to put these expedients into effect, the more productive will be the processes in which the workmen turn the employer's capital goods to account. So, also, the more competent the work of "superintendence," the foreman-like oversight and correlation of the work in respect of kind, speed, volume, the more will it count in the aggregate of productive efficiency. ”

“ Efficiency begins at the employment office. Experts are hired for the one purpose, to find out how best to fit the worker to his work. It’s economy for the boss to make the [Pg 165] worker happy.” And then he talked a lot more on efficiency in educated language that was over my head.
I didn’t know exactly what it meant—efficiency—but if it was to make the worker happy at his work, then that’s what I had been looking for since I came to America. ”

“ The rate at which skill is acquired has been the subject of many careful studies. The results have been charted and reduced to curves, variously spoken of as ``efficiency curves,'' ``practice curves,'' ``learning curves,'' according to the nature of the task or test. ”

“ In the efforts of scientists to seek out and establish new methods, new principles, the success of an experiment is to be determined, I suppose, by the test, Will it work? Does it yield effective results? Similarly, in economics, the science of mankind in its production, distribution and consumption of material things, the test of utility and efficiency is, Will it pay? that being the standard of workableness in the application of that science. ”

“ EFFICIENCY, when applied to personal capacity, signifies a maximum of return with a minimum of outlay; hence one man is more efficient than another if, with a given expenditure of energy, time, raw material or capital, he can secure a larger, though equally good, product. The term efficiency is thus purely relative, since there is no known limit to human possibilities. ”

“ Efficiency is an essential item in the success of any business—not the efficiency of any one man, but of the entire working group. Although efficiency is so intimately connected with success, on the one hand, it is no less closely related to standards of living, on the other. ”

“ By working out and establishing a standard method and standard time for various ``repeat'' operations a workman is engaged in, it encourages—and even enforces—the formation of new efficiency habits. The bonus paid for the accomplishment of the task in the specified time supplies an immediate and powerful motive to the effort necessary to master the ``right way'' of doing things. ”

“ It is essential that every manager should be on the alert to eliminate waste and to improve efficiency, that he should be always trying to secure the best results; but how can he do this if he has no simple means of measuring what results are good and what are bad? The measure which he has at present is that of price, cost and the resultant profit, and it would be fatal to take that away, unless an equally simple and more accurate measure could be substituted for it. ”

“ The points to be observed here are not only the importance of using the right standard of measurement, but that the efficiency of the man depended very largely upon his surrounding conditions over which he had no control. These conditions depend upon the efficiency of the management in securing proper equipment from the owners. This in turn depends upon the efficiency of the management’s records in enabling it to state clearly and accurately what increase in output and consequently in profits will result from improving the conditions—thus justifying the expenditure required. ”

“ Records of individual efficiency are comparatively easy to make when output is separated. But even when work must be done by gangs or teams of men, there is provision made in Scientific Management for recording this gang work in such a way that either the output or the efficiency, or both, of each man shows up separately. ”

“ Moreover, the results of efficiency methods, within the writer’s knowledge, are sufficient to convince him that their general adoption would so increase the purchasing power of the employe, by increasing his wages and decreasing the cost production, as to have a markedly beneficial and steadying effect upon the business of the country. ”