I have learned of only one manager who realizes
that although the factory workers are not to be trusted to maintain
standards, a management nevertheless will fail to get the workers'
full cooeperation until it arouses their interest in maintaining them.
The manager is Mr. Robert Wolf, who illustrated this point at a
meeting of the Taylor Society in March, 1917. In describing the
process of extracting the last possible amount of water from paper
pulp, he said:
"Our problem was to determine the best length of time to keep the
low pressure on, as the high, pressure is governed entirely by the
production coming from the wet machine. After having determined
that three minutes of low pressure ... gives maximum moisture
test, we furnished each man on the wet machines with a clock and
asked him to leave this low pressure on just three minutes. As
long as the foremen kept constantly after their men and vigilantly
followed them up we obtained some slight increase in the test; but
it required a constant urging upon our part to focus the attention
of the men upon this three minute time of low pressure.... We
realized finally that in order to get the results we were after,
it was necessary for us to produce _a desire_ upon the part of
our men to do this work in the proper way ... so we designed an
instrument which would give us a record of the time lost between
pressing operations, also the number of minutes the low pressure
was kept on.
Pages:
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48