Shop Management

70 SHOP MANAGEMENT of assigning a daily task as against ordinary piece work lies in the fact that the success of a good work- man or the failure of a poor one is thereby daily and prominently called to the attention of the manage- ment. Many a poor workman might be willing to go along in a slipshod way under ordinary piece work, careless as to whether he fell off a little in his output or not. Very few of them, however, would be willing to record a daily failure to accomplish their task even if they were allowed to do so by their foreman; and also since on ordinary piece work the price alone is specified without limiting the time which the job is to take, a quite large falling off in output can in many cases occur without coming to the attention of the management at all. It is for these reasons that the writer has above indicated “a large daily task” for each man as the first of four principles which should be included in the best type of management. It is evident, however, that it is useless to assign a task unless at the same time adequate measures are taken to enforce its accomplishment. As Arte- mus Ward says, “I can call the spirits from the windy deep, but damn ’em they won’t come!” It is to compel the completion of the daily task then that two of the other principles are required, namely, “high pay for success” and “loss in case of failure.” The advantage of Mr. H. L. Gantt’s system of “task work with a bonus,” and the writer’s “differential rate piece work” over the other systems lies in the fact that with each of these the men automatically and daily receive either an extra reward in case of