His assistant, not having
undertaken work of this kind before, failed at it, and the writer was
forced to do it himself. He did all of the work of chipping, cleaning,
and overhauling a set of boilers and at the same time made a careful
time study of each of the elements of the work. This time study showed
that a great part of the time was lost owing to the constrained position
of the workman. Thick pads were made to fasten to the elbows, knees, and
hips; special tools and appliances were made for the various details of
the work; a complete list of the tools and implements was entered on the
instruction card, each tool being stamped with its own number for
identification, and all were issued from the tool room in a tool box so
as to keep them together and save time. A separate piece work price was
fixed for each of the elements of the job and a thorough inspection of
each part of the work secured as it was completed.
The instruction card for this work filled several typewritten pages, and
described in detail the order in which the operations should be done and
the exact details of each man's work, with the number of each tool
required, piece work prices, etc.
The whole scheme was much laughed at when it first went into use, but
the trouble taken was fully justified, for the work was better done than
ever before, and it cost only eleven dollars to completely overhaul a
set of 300 H.
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