The Principles of Scientific Management quotes

But our larger wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, and which Mr. Roosevelt refers to as a, lack of "national efficiency," are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated.

We can see and feel the waste of material things.

Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them. Their appreciation calls for an act of memory, an effort of the imagination.

We can see and feel the waste of material things.

Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them.

Their appreciation calls for an act of memory, an effort of the imagination.

… appreciated that our leaders must be trained right as well as born right, and that no great man can (with the old system of personal management) hope to compete with a number of ordinary men who have been properly organized so as efficiently to cooperate.

In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first.

This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men;

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Under this plan the better men gradually but surely slow down their gait to that of the poorest and least efficient.

When a naturally energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one, the logic of the situation is unanswerable."

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Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow gets the same pay that I do and does only half as much work?

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"These men were working under a foreman of good reputation and highly thought of by his employer, who, when his attention was called to this state of things, answered: '

Well, I can keep them from sitting down, but the devil can't make them get a move on while they are at work.

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He also had the reputation of being exceedingly "close," that is, of placing a very high value on a dollar. As one man whom we talked to about him said, "

A penny looks about the size of a cart-wheel to him.

" This man we will call Schmidt.

While the men constantly brought such pressure to bear (both inside and outside the works) upon all those who started to increase their output that they were finally compelled to do about as the rest did, or else quit.

No one who has not had this experience can have an idea of the bitterness which is gradually developed in such a struggle.

In a war of this kind the workmen have one expedient which is usually effective.

For any right-minded man, however, this success is in no sense a recompense for the bitter relations which he is forced to maintain with all of those around him.

Life which is one continuous struggle with other men is hardly worth living.

His workman friends came to him continually and asked him, in a personal, friendly way, whether he would advise them, for their own best interest, to turn out more work.

When, on the other hand, they receive much more than a 60 per cent increase in wages, many of them will work irregularly and tend to become more or less shiftless, extravagant, and dissipated.

Our experiments showed, in other words, that it does not do for most men to get rich too fast.

After deciding, for this reason, not to raise the wages of our ore handlers, these men were brought into the office one at a time, and talked to somewhat as follows:

In about two weeks the foreman reported that all of the girls he had talked to agreed that they could do their present work just as well in ten hours as in ten and one-half and that they approved of the change.

The writer had not been especially noted for his tact so he decided that it would be wise for him to display a little more of this quality by having the girls vote on the new proposition.

This decision was hardly justified, however, for when the vote was taken the girls were unanimous that 10 1/2 hours was good enough for them and they wanted no innovation of any kind.

There is a general principle back of this which should be appreciated by all of those who are especially interested in the management of men.

A reward, if it is to be effective in stimulating men to do their best work, must come soon after the work has been done.

But few men are able to look forward for more than a week or perhaps at most a month, and work hard for a reward which they are to receive at the end of this time.

A second reason for the inefficiency of profit-sharing schemes had been that no form of cooperation has yet been devised in which each individual is allowed free scope for his personal ambition.

Personal ambition always has been and will remain a more powerful incentive to exertion than a desire for the general welfare.

The few misplaced drones, who do the loafing and share equally in the profits, with the rest, under cooperation are sure to drag the better men down toward their level.

And in fact the great length of time consumed in making each single experiment was caused by the difficulty of holding eleven variables constant and uniform throughout the experiment, while the effect of the twelfth variable was being investigated.

Holding the eleven variables constant was far more difficult than the investigation of the twelfth element.

As, one after another, the effect upon the cutting speed of each of these variables was investigated, in order that practical use could be made of this knowledge, it was necessary to find a mathematical formula which expressed in concise form the laws which had …

The history of the development of scientific, management up to date, however, calls for a word of warning.

The mechanism of management must not be mistaken for its essence, or underlying philosophy.

Precisely the same mechanism will in one case produce disastrous results and in another the most beneficent.

It is no single element, but rather this whole combination, that constitutes scientific management, which may be summarized as:

Science, not rule of thumb.

Harmony, not discord. Cooperation, not individualism. Maximum output, in place of restricted output. The development of each man to his greatest efficiency and prosperity.

But more than all other causes, the close, intimate cooperation, the constant personal contact between the two sides, will tend to diminish friction and discontent.

It is difficult for two people whose interests are the same, and who work side by side in accomplishing the same object, all day long, to keep up a quarrel.

The low cost of production which accompanies a doubling of the output will enable the companies who adopt this management, particularly those who adopt it first, to compete far better than they were able to before, and this will so enlarge their markets that their …

Scientific management will mean, for the employers and the workmen who adopt it—and particularly for those who adopt it first—the elimination of almost all causes for dispute and disagreement between them.

What constitutes a fair day's work will be a question for scientific investigation, instead of a subject to be bargained and haggled over.

Soldiering will cease because the object for soldiering will no longer exist. The great increase in wages which accompanies this type of management will largely eliminate the wage question as a source of dispute.