Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

THE FOREMEN 53 miniature planning department located in a single shop. (See Lieut. Sterling’s paper in C. B. Thomp- son’s Collection.) These men, with chiefly head- work to do, are the order-of-work and route clerk, the instruction-card clerk, and the time and cost clerk. The first named writes daily charts assigning work to the machines and men, according to the directions from the head of the planning depart- ment ; the instruction-card clerk produces written information for the individual workers, or for the foremen working in the shops, in all the details of their work—the tools, the speeds and feeds, the time, for each operation. The third clerk issues time tickets, and collects information as to the time taken for each job, whereby he may calculate the earnings of the "workmen. These things are done in accord- ance with Taylor’s idea of removing brain-work as far as possible from the shop. It will be obvious that in a small works one person (with perhaps one assistant training under him) will perform the duties of each of these clerks for the whole establishment, instead of for a single shop. With regard to the four foremen regularly in the shop, Taylor himself says, “ it was preferable to use ” them in his own works (see p. 100, “ Shop Management ”), which looks as if he were prepared for modifications in other works. The American term “ boss ” is used for them. It is strange in English ears, and disagreeable perhaps in the “ indefinite fringe ” of meaning which psychologists say words often bring with them. It is apt to