Shop Management

SHOP MANAGEMENT 193 given a series of plain, simple, and reasonable orders, and is offered a premium for carrying them out, the union will have a much more difficult task in defend- ing the man who disobeys them. To illustrate: If we take the case of a complicated piece of machine work which is being done on a lathe or other machine tool, and the workman is called upon (under the old type of management) to increase his output by twenty-five or fifty per cent, there is opened a field of argument in which the assertion of the man, backed by the union, that the task is impossible or too hard, will have quite as much weight as that of the management. If, however, the management begins by analyzing in detail just how each section of the work should be done and then writes out com- plete instructions specifying the tools to be used in succession, the cone step on which the driving belt is to run, the depth of cut and the feed to be used, the exact manner in which the work is to be set in the machine, etc., and if before starting to make any change they have trained in as functional foremen several men who are particularly expert and well informed in their specialities, as, for instance, a speed boss, gang boss, and inspector; if you then place for example a speed boss alongside of that workman, with an instruction card clearly written out, stating what both the speed boss and the man whom he is instructing are to do, and that card says you are to use such and such a tool, put your driving belt on this cone, and use this feed on your machine, and if you do so you will get out the work in such and such a time, I can hardly conceive of a case in