R. Hathaway, an expert engineer, testifies that ``under this system a workman can turn out from two to four times as much work'' as he was able to accomplish when working with his old habits,
Mr. Lewis Sanders, of the General Engineering Company, New York, reports most satisfactory results from the introduction of this systematic attempt to regulate the occupation habits of employees. A typical example which he reports is the following: It regularly took a man one minute and forty seconds to set a piece in a jig. ``After a study of the exact motions required to pick the piece up and set it accurately, we showed the same man how to do it in twenty seconds.'' This workman soon reduced the correct movement to habit, attained the specified speed, and without in any way working harder than formerly was assisted to increase his efficiency four hundred per cent.
A well-known engineering company re-
quired the reading of twelve thermometers, each every two minutes. The man assigned to the task could rarely read so many as eight of them in the two minutes. An expert took up the problem and at first could do no better than the first man. The expert studied the most favorable position of the head and eyes for reading, eliminated all useless motions, and discovered that the twelve thermometers could then be read in one minute and fifty seconds. The workman who previously had with difficulty read eight thermometers in two minutes soon acquired the proper occupation habits and was enabled to read the twelve with perfect ease. His efficiency was increased forty per cent, and the task was rendered less exacting than before.
Typewriting is carried on by habits. The habit of writing most naturally formed is that known as the sight system. Recently, attempts have been successfully made to enable the operators to form the habit of writing by touch rather than by sight. The
operator who acquires the habit of locating the keys by touch writes much faster and with less nervous strain than the operator who writes from sight.
No one has been more successful in studying occupation habits than Mr. Frank B. Gilbreth, an expert in the building trades. He discovered that in constructing a brick wall a good mason can lay one hundred and twenty bricks in an hour and that in laying each brick he makes eighteen distinct motions. The motions were not made in an economical sequence; some of them were useless, and merely exhausted the energy of the workman. Mr. Gilbreth attempted to apply to the industry of bricklaying the principles of billiard playing. Every motion of the mason should be a ``play for position.'' He should make each motion so as to be ready for the next. For example, the motion of placing the mortar for the end joint should end with the trowel in position ready to cut off the hanging mortar. When the motions are made in the correct sequence,
two or more of them can be combined and performed in but little more time than would be required to make each of the separate motions. Thus, cutting off mortar, buttering the end of the laid brick, and reaching for more mortar can all be performed as a single movement. In this way the motions of the mason have been reduced from eighteen to five per brick. All this change has been brought about from a study of the occupation habits of masons. In discussing the results, Mr. Gilbreth says: ``It has changed the entire method of laying bricks by reducing the kind, number, sequence, and length of motions. The economic value of motion study has been proved by the fact that we have more than tripled the workman's output in bricklaying and at the same time lowered cost and increased wages simultaneously, and the end is not yet.''
Attempts to develop beneficial occupation habits in executives have not yet been exhaustively and scientifically carried out. Such experiments are, however, sure to be
successful, and it is quite probable that before another decade has passed the habits of executives will have been as successfully studied and controlled as have the occupation habits of mechanics cited above.