Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

136 EFFICIENCY METHODS systems allied to the premium-bonus systems, but claim to use the bonus principle in a perfectly different way. First, the basis is settled, the standard task, by knowledge and not by guess. Standard task or schedule time, whichever it may be, is a matter of observation and computation. The determination is made by analysis into elements, and the details of these elements are given to the workman for his examination, so that he can point out exactly what he may think difficult or impossible. We have seen that this process is one of the first principles of scientific management, though we have always to remember that it needs much patience and perseverance to realize it; that these standards and schedules are not created in a day, or a week, or a month. Next, the workers are not left to their own devices for increasing their skill or speed, as in the usual bonus systems. The management undertakes en- tirely the investigation into the best ways of work- ing ; it then asks the workman to receive instruction in these ways, whenever they are different from his former practice, and to adopt them instead of his own. It also undertakes that the conditions are all that they should be ; that a worker is not hindered or stopped by imperfect tools, or the non-appearance of some of his equipment. All difficulties, as far as possible, are to be cleared out of his way. He will then receive a bonus for the extra work which he accomplishes. It will be obvious that when a management of this