Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

MANAGEMENT : A PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION IQ of merely the money aspect of operations as a whole. Detailed analysis is ignored. Instances are known to every accountant of businesses where one depart- ment has been steadily losing money while the whole has prospered. But it is not so often realized that, for want of proper analysis, it frequently occurs that some part of a process is steadily becoming less efficient, and the fact is not detected until an actual break-down happens. The financial results of a year or half-year of business are known only weeks or months after the close of the period, and as a rule there is no regular comparison of details for one period with previous similar periods. When a comparison is made it is of useless quantities, e.g., total wages, total fuel (steam produced not con- sidered), total oil, and so on. Yet here one finds the manager afflicted with “ that most hopeless of all industrial diseases, called ‘ knowing his own business.’ ”1 It is hardly fair to call the systematized manage- ment only “ transitional,” as is done by devotees of the new methods. A well systematized concern is the very one in which alterations will not readily be adopted, as the authorities can point to work well done, and to a great contrast with the looser organizations. Records are kept, even records of individual workers, so that there is opportunity for personal contact with the men ; costs are carefully calculated; reports are to hand quarterly or monthly ; the purchasing and storing of material is 1 W. C. Redfield, “ The New Industrial Day.”