The Principles of Scientific Management

THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 77 with the workmen. The Pittsburg managers knew just how the results had been attained at Bethlehem, but they were unwilling to go to the small trouble and expense required to plan ahead and assign a separate car to each shoveler, and then keep an individual record of each man’s work, and pay him just what he had earned. Bricklaying is one of the oldest of our trades. For hundreds of years there has been little or no improvement made in the implements and materials used in this trade, nor in fact in the method of laying bricks. In spite of the millions of men who have practised this trade, no great improvement has been evolved for many generations. Here, then, at least, one would expect to find but little gain possible through scientific analysis and study. Mr. Frank B. Gilbreth, a member of our Society, who had himself studied bricklaying in his youth, became interested in the principles of scientific management, and decided to apply them to the art of bricklay- ing. He made an intensely interesting analysis and study of each movement of the bricklayer, and one after another eliminated all unnecessary movements and substituted fast for slow motions. He experi- mented with every minute element which in any way affects the speed and the tiring of the brick- layer. He developed the exact position which each of the feet of the bricklayer should occupy with rela- tion to the wall, the mortar box, and the pile of bricks, and so made it unnecessary for him to take