Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

52 EFFICIENCY METHODS combination of qualities needed to make a good foreman of this description was such that only a most exceptional person would be satisfactory; and, further, that when he was found his actual value in a works was so great that he would deserve an exceptional position with greater authority. As the foreman’s routine work was too heavy and too varied, he proposed to substitute for him eight men with specialized functions. Whereupon his hearers or readers, quite accustomed to the idea of a single foreman, and not believing his work to be so complex, visualized eight men tumbling over one another in the shop, each haranguing or disciplining the workmen on one subject or another, each wanting to stop a machine constantly in order to rearrange it; and, finally, eight more or less discordant reports going up to headquarters daily. An arrangement of this kind seemed more like pandemonium. However, on reading carefully Taylor’s description of the specialized work, we discover that of these eight foremen three are usually in the planning department, and communicate with the workers by written directions and forms ; four are active in the shop among the machines; and the work of the eighth is likely to be peripatetic for the whole establishment. It is true, in works where the planning department itself is kept small and with limited duties, the three “ foremen ’’ whom Taylor located there as clerks may be put back into the shops again ; but they still communicate with the men chiefly by writing ; they may indeed form a