Standardization

“ That level of standardization should be chosen, which it is believed will produce more good and less harm than any other level that might be chosen. Or in other words, the level of standardization should be determined by a balance of the interests involved—that point being chosen at which, it is judged, the most favorable balance is established. ”

“ As soon as it is realized that the reason that it is attractive is because it is standardized, the entire subject of standardization rises in the estimation of every one, and the introduction of standards can be carried on more rapidly, and with greater success. ”

“ Standardization Conserves and Develops Individuality. — Standardization conserves individual capacity by doing away with the wasteful process of trial and error of the individual workman. It develops individuality by allowing the worker to concentrate his initiative upon work that has not before been done, and by providing incentive and reward for inventions.
Waste Eliminated Is Eliminated Permanently. — Scientific Management not only eliminates waste, but provides that waste shall be eliminated for all time in the future. ”

“ Under Transitory Management Standardization Becomes Constantly More Important. — Not until Motion Study and Time Study have been introduced can the full benefits of standardization be attained. But as soon as the Transitory Stage of Management appears, the importance of standardization is realized. This is brought about largely through the records of individual outputs, which constantly call attention to the necessity of making available to all the methods, tools and equipment of the most successful workers. ”

“ The standardization not only of the relationship between the men, but of the relationships between the foreman, the manager, and the worker, the fact that the disciplining is put in the hands of a man who is not biased by his personal feelings in his dealings with the men; — all of these things mean that the viewpoint of the men as to their work and their relationship remains fixed. This standardizing of the viewpoint is an enormous help toward increasing output. ”

“ Standardization (to use the word as I understand it) is not just taking one's best selling article and concentrating on it. It is planning day and night and probably for years, first on something which will best suit the public and then on how it should be made. The exact processes of manufacturing will develop of themselves. Then, if we shift the manufacturing from the profit to the service basis, we shall have a real business in which the profits will be all that any one could desire. ”

“ It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and of enforcing-this cooperation rests with the management alone. ”

“ That is whether the principle of standardization, as put forward up to this point, should be limited or varied in any way because it would have to apply, as a matter of fact, to an area so great and so diversified in economic character as the United States, and to an industrial situation which is the product of a great number of separate impulses, and which is made up of a vast number of separate interests. ”

“ So that, unlike what happens in the business community at large, no standardization has here determined the limits of legitimate prevarication; nor can such a standardization and limit be worked out so long as the executive is required, in effect, to function as the discretionary employer of his academic staff and hold them to account as agents for whom he is responsible, at the same time that he must, in appearance, be their confidential spokesman and their colleague in the corporation of learning. ”

“ Standardization shifts the objects of attention and eliminates the need for constant concentration. The standardization of processes relieves the worker to a marked extent from the extremely fatiguing mental effort of unproductive fixed, valueless, and unnecessary attention on the stream of consciousness. The repeated elements which form a part of all standards reconcentrates the attention if it is allowed to lapse. ”

“ Standardization is excellent, per se. When I buy an Ingersoll watch or a Ford, I get a better tool for less money, and I know precisely what I'm getting, and that leaves me more time and energy to be individual in. ”

“ The specifically commercial need of uniformity in weights and measures of merchantable goods and in monetary units has not carried standardization in these items to the extent to which the mechanical need of the industrial process has carried out a sweeping standardization in the means by which the machine process works, as well as in the products which it turns out. ”

“ Standardization Eliminates the Shifting Viewpoint. — Under old-time Traditional Management the way that the man happened to feel at the particular time made a great difference, not only in his work, but in his relations with other men. ”

“ To standardize a work of art would be to kill it. Standardization is valuable where interchangeability is necessary rather than adaptation to local conditions. Portable houses, for instance, with interchangeable parts, have been standardized to a certain extent, but only within the bounds of uniform climatic conditions. ”

“ It thus appears that in their original states, culture and political organization are independent phenomena, but that when the latter reaches a certain status, it seizes upon culture and standardizes it. On the other hand, it is by no means clear what causes led to the curious gradations of culture in regions occupied by many small political units. Standardization is a deliberate conscious process, but we may suspect that the causes underlying gradation lie outside of consciously directed activities. ”

“ In many investigations the method of comparison has been brought to a degree of perfection which justifies reference to it as a special method of scientific research. All the previous discussions of standardization show how a single school system profits by the effort to evaluate its own practices in the light of the experiences and results of other school systems. ”

“ One of the real benefits to the public due to the existence of great corporations has been the development of a general demand for standardization. Everything must be measured that can be bought or sold. ”

“ To meet the necessities of this difficult control, and to meet them always without jeopardizing the interests of the school as a competitive concern, a close-cut mechanical standardization, uniformity, surveillance and accountancy are indispensable. ”

“ It is the worker's right as well as privilege to understand the management under which he works, and he only truly coöperates, with his will and judgment as well as with his hands, when he feels that his mind is a part of the directing mind.
Standardization Under Scientific Management Eliminates Waste Scientifically. — Under Scientific Management the elimination of waste by the use of standards becomes a science. Standards are no longer based on opinions, as under Traditional Management, but are based upon scientific investigation of the elements of experience. ”

“ Two answers are to be made to this objection to the movement toward standardization. In the first place, the higher values of education are not secured by teachers who are negligent of the fundamental mechanical requirements. ”

“ The modern industrial communities show an unprecedented uniformity and precise equivalence in legally adopted weights and measures. Something of this kind would be brought about by the needs of commerce, even without the urgency given to the movement for uniformity by the requirements of the machine industry. But within the industrial field the movement for standardization has outrun the urging of commercial needs, and has penetrated every corner of the mechanical industries. ”

“ Standardization and the control of technical processes which become more and more perfect with the increasing knowledge of scientific laws and mechanics fling the craftsman in ever increasing numbers upon the scrap heap and confiscate his precious possession, his particular little piece of property. ”

“ The quality of many products, however, though improving, has not measured up to average world standards. In 1972 the chairman of the Administration for Quality Standardization, and Metrology stated that his organization was confronted with a difficult long-term task of developing an effective quality control system and of catching up and keeping pace with the constantly rising world quality standards. ”

“ It would seem almost unnecessary to dwell upon the desirability of standardizing, not only all of the tools, appliances and implements throughout the works and office, but also the methods to be used in the multitude of small operations which are repeated day after day. There are many good managers of the old school, however, who feel that this standardization is not only unnecessary but that it is undesirable, their principal reason being that it is better to allow each workman to develop his individuality by choosing the particular implements and methods which suit him best. ”

“ The fact that instructions are written, provides against wrong methods of handling work. 16 The concentrated attention caused by standardization, is a safeguard against accidents that occur from the worker's carelessness.17 The proper allowance of rest for overcoming fatigue, insures that the worker's mind is fresh enough to enable him to comply with standards, and, finally, the spirit of coöperation that underlies Scientific Management is an added check against accidents, in that everyone is guarding his fellows as well as himself. ”

“ Absolute standardization is impossible, because of the varying social circumstances and indeed social outlook in different parts of the country, but, after allowing for this, much greater approximation to uniformity could be secured. ”

“ One of the earliest developments of a feeling of professional pride in one’s work is an insistence on the adequate training of the workers and on the establishment of standards of efficiency both for workers and work. Here belongs a forecast not only of library school training, but of official inspection and certification, of systems of service, etc. Standardization of this kind is on the increase and is bound to be{318} enforced with greater strictness in the future. In our professional training as in other professions the tendency is toward specialization. ”

“ A feature that makes it especially adaptable to schools is the standardization by the present business manager, under whose direction blue prints, photographs, and written and pictured specifications have been prepared. ”

“ The attention of those who believe that standardization makes machines out of the workers themselves, is called to the absence of such effect upon the typist as compared with the scribe, the monotype and linotype operator as compared with the compositor, and the mechanical computing machine operator as compared with the arithmetician. ”

“ Materials, to answer the needs of standardized industry, must be drawn from certain standard sources at a definite rate of supply. Hence any given detail industry depends closely on receiving its supplies from certain, relatively few, industrial establishments whose work belongs earlier in the process of elaboration. And it ma similarly depend on certain other, closely defined, industrial establishments for a vent of its own specialization and standardization product. ”

“ Even if it were possible so to arrange the work of every worker that he could be in close proximity to the equipment for planning and could be given the training needed, individual planning for "small lots" with no systematized standardization of planning-results would be an economic waste that would cause an unnecessary hardship on the worker, the employer and the ultimate consumer. ”

“ As soon as the utility of measurements has been proved, it becomes a public obligation to provide agencies for this work.
295
The growth of the movement toward the addition in all large school systems of one or more officers whose duty it shall be to measure results has been commented on in earlier connections. There is a national organization of school-efficiency officers with a membership including representatives of some twenty of the leading systems of the country. This shows in a concrete way that the demand for central officers of standardization is beginning to be met. ”

“ A standard remains fixed only until a more perfect standard displaces it. The data from which the standard was derived may be reviewed because of some error, because a further subdivision of the elements studied may prove possible, or because improvements in some factor of the work, i.e., the worker, material, tools, equipment, etc., may make a new standard desirable. ”

“ Just so, under Scientific Management, the best known standards are used continuously until better have been discovered. The planning department, consisting of the best men available, whose special duty it is to create new standards, acts as does the Simplified Spelling Board, as a court of appeals for new standards, which must pass this court before they can hope to succeed the old, and which must, if they are to be accepted, possess many elements of the old and be changed only in such a way that the users can, without difficulty, shift to the new use. ”

“ Standards Lead to Right Methods of Thinking and Acting. — The standards of Scientific Management, as presented to the worker in the instruction card, lead to good habits, in that they present the best known method of doing the work. They thus aid the beginner, in that he need waste no time searching for right methods, but can acquire right habits at once. They aid the worker trained under an older, supplanted method, in that they wage a winning war against old-time, worn-out methods and traditions. ”