Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

CHAPTER X STANDARDIZATION OF METHODS (Continued) 8. Fatigue-Study But a very important new feature usually appears as a part of the grand total—the allowance for rest. This, again,.is made as far as possible after careful collection of experimental data, and these experi- ments and observations are known by the title of Fatigue Study. When Dr. Taylor’s attention was first drawn to the necessity of some allowance of the kind, he was not able to find very much information in the literature then published which dealt with the question of fatigue, especially as very little work had been done on industrial fatigue. He set on foot experi- ments which he planned himself, with the object of discovering “ some rule or law ” to enable one to “ know in advance how much of any kind of heavy labouring work a man who was well suited to his job ought to do in a day.” 1 No information that he was able to get in French, German o rEnglish gave him a clue to any “ law,” and his two first series of experiments brought him no nearer. After he had taken a third set, all the data were given to 1 " Principles of Scientific Management,” p. 53.