The Efficiency Expert
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.
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Holy crap.Report
Industrial engineering goes back a long time.Report
There was an infamous efficiency study done back in the days of the Bell System, at the huge Western Electric production plant SW of Omaha. (Basically, raw materials of various sorts went in one end, finished telephones came out the other end a half-mile away.) The experts were looking at working conditions to see what would increase productivity. They turned the lights up brighter — productivity increased a small amount. They turned the light back to where they had been — productivity increased a small amount. They set the thermostat higher — productivity increased a small amount. They set the thermostat lower — yet again, productivity increased a small amount.
So they conducted interviews. They found the line workers noticed the changes and thought, “Ah! They’re paying attention to us! What we’re doing must be important!” The summary in the report was, “Paying attention to the workers make them feel better about themselves, and happy workers work faster than sad workers.”Report
Seriously.Report
Were people supposed to find this funny at the time or be appalled?Report
A snort followed by “we have one of those jerkfaces where I work!” or “man, I’m glad I work in a place where we don’t have one of those jerkfaces!” or “honey, is this really something that happens at your work?”Report
Why not both?Report
Hi, honey, I’m home!Report
Appalled, I’d imagine,
After all, it appears the same complaint I’ve always seen in various jobs – — management layers just there to get in the way and soak up money, penny-wise, pound-foolish budget choices (“let’s fire the old hands making too much, and replace them with cheap new hires” and end up having to pay more to get less done because experience counts…)
Most businesses are poorly run, but unfortunately most tactics to make them “run better” are just as poorly done. “We’re going to fix your incompetency with our own” rarely works out well.
I think I’ve seen four or five full consultant driven re-orgs in my career (at various companies, of course) and only one actually improved things. That one was likely the most expensive, as they looked at overall workflow and management and didn’t just identify overlap, over-management, or other issues — they handed over a complete solution on how to re-org that meant no tasks were overlooked, and that nobody was overburdened with the changes. Heck, a number of over-loaded people actually had tasks removed so they’d have some space to breath instead of running constantly on the edge of burnout.Report
the book version of Cheaper By The Dozen (which is different from any of the recent movies) featured Frank Bunker Gilbreth, an efficiency expert, who tried to run his family (11 children living at that time) along the lines of “time and motion” studies. Two of the kids wrote the book as adults. I remember reading it as a young teen and while it wasn’t as horrible as the cartoon depicts, I can imagine it being….not the most fun household. So maybe an obsession with efficiency was a thing in the ’20s? ISTR the children grew up in that era, the book was published in the late 1940s.Report
So maybe an obsession with efficiency was a thing in the ’20s?
Yeah, pretty much. Henry Ford’s radical changes to how cars were manufactured were broadly known — everyone wanted to make the same kinds of productivity gains in their business. Industrial engineering became a recognized academic discipline.
Frank Gilbreth’s wife Lillian Gilbreth was also a leading figure in industrial engineering at that time, most notably for combining psychology with time-and-motion studies.Report