there seems to be no necessity for arguing in favor of _discipline_
as an essential to economical field work; but so large a percentage
of contract work in the field is badly disciplined, and the general
principles seem to be unknown to so many field organizations, that a
brief statement of them appears to be called for in this volume.
By _discipline_ is meant the cultivation of a spirit of:
1. Co─operation;
2. Obedience;
3. Responsibility;
4. Personal loyalty.
The subject will be discussed on the basis of _reorganization of work_,
because here the chief difficulties are met.
The three types of organization that are most clearly defined in the
way of discipline, are those of a _military nature_, _railroad work_,
and _factory work_.
On construction work, it is not feasible to introduce a military form
of discipline. In the first place, the penalties of the military
service are not permissible; and in the second place it is not
usually practicable to have so thorough a system of distribution
of responsibility; while in the third place the same men are not
here together for a long enough period to make military discipline
practicable.
In railroad work a man is usually employed for a long term of years, on
rather small pay, with a large chance of promotion. From the day of his
initiation on the work, he is impressed profoundly with the necessity
of protecting lives and of keeping trains moving all the time; and,
in a short time, he comes to the frame of mind in which his pay, his
personal convenience, and his personal prejudice are subordinate
interests. The initials of the superintendent on a little slip of
paper are sufficient to make him do almost anything within the limit
of endurance; and, as a general thing, he does it ungrudgingly (but
not uncomplainingly), and with a cheerfulness that is in many respects
astonishing.
Such a degree of discipline is entirely feasible on any contract work
of long duration, and it should be obtained if economy is desired. It
is not possible to institute successfully radical reforms and methods,
without first securing good discipline on the work; and when work is
badly disorganized, the discipline should be the first point of attack.
It is necessary to have, first, a system of locating responsibility. If
a dinkey becomes derailed, if the spacing of drill holes be erroneously
made, if a steam shovel be out of line, if the wrong methods of
loading be pursued, if a pump be out of order, if necessary material
or supplies be wanting, if the pipes freeze up, if, in short, one
hundred and one little things happen that cause confusion on the work,
it should be possible to find someone who, by some crime of omission
or commission, is responsible for the trouble, and who can be made, in
some degree at least, to bear the brunt of it. The only man who seems
destined to be entirely free from the consequence of his mistakes, is
the clerk of the Weather Bureau.
The organization should be laid out from the bottom upward, rather
than from the top downward. The laborer is responsible practically for
carrying out the instructions of his foreman to the satisfaction of
his foreman and of no one else, and for this reason he should not work
under the impression that anyone except his own foreman is likely to
discharge him, to criticise him, or to praise him. If his foreman be
the right sort of man, the laborer, with his dozen associates, will
have at heart, besides the interests of the work, a strong feeling of
personal loyalty to the foreman; and this feeling will be reciprocated
by the foreman. If a foreman be noticed vigorously complaining that the
men he has to deal with are inefficient, incompetent, and a disgrace to
civilization compared to the men he had to work with some years before,
he may as a general thing be put down as a "blow─hard" and of little
value to the organization. The most successful are usually the ones
who are ordinarily quiet, cool under emergency, and yet of sufficient
determination to inspire among the men a wholesome respect for them.
A man who loses his temper on the work for any reason, does not, as a
general thing, make a good foreman or superintendent.
The relations obtaining between the men and their foreman, should
obtain to a more marked degree between the foreman and their
superintendent. Briefly stated, every man on the job should have
to look for orders from one man and only one man; and he should be
responsible to that man for the satisfactory performance of those
orders.
Conflicting orders can be avoided only by systematic compliance with
the rule just above outlined.
It sometimes happens after periods of financial depression, or as a
result of special conditions, that it is feasible to reduce the pay of
a good many men on the work. This should always be done with great care
and after an intimate knowledge has been obtained of the personalities
of the men affected. As a general thing, if you cut down a man's pay 10
per cent, you will cut down the work 20 per cent, at least for a time;
and it frequently happens that after such a pay reduction, small, petty
depredations on the work are committed. Articles get stolen; machinery
is damaged by "sore heads." It is usually unwise to reduce the pay of a
few men. As a general policy, where a small percentage of the working
force is to be affected, it is better to discharge a few men outright,
and endeavor by economic methods to increase the output of the others.
Differential pay is a prolific source of trouble, and it is very
common. By this is meant the payment to different men of different
rates for the performance of the same work. The men who obtain the
less pay think that their pay ought to be raised; and the man who gets
the most pay can in no probability appreciate the fact that he may be
over─paid. Rather than cut his pay down, it is well, if possible, to
put him at some other class of work.
It is often necessary for economical reasons to place men who have been
paid by the month, upon an hourly basis; and even when by this they
average rather more than they formerly received, it usually causes
discontent. Any man likes to know how he is coming out at the end of
the month regardless of the weather, and it is an additional source of
anxiety to him not to know what his pay envelope will contain. When he
keeps his own record of the hours worked, he is likely to disagree with
the time─keeper, and this can lead to a good deal of disaffection and
dissatisfaction.
A frequent cause of disaffection on work is due to the habit too often
indulged in by time─keepers, of gossiping with the men. The time─keeper
and the storekeeper necessarily come into contact with a very large
percentage of the men every day; and if the time─keeper particularly be
disposed to gossip, he has abundant opportunity to gratify his desire,
and can produce a great deal of trouble. For this reason the general
character of the time─keeper should be carefully scrutinized before
employing him; and he should be cautious, when making his rounds, to
confine himself strictly to business. If the men on the job know as
much about the work as the General Manager, if they know all the ins
and outs and ups and downs of the contract, they necessarily discuss it
among themselves, and a great deal of restlessness is produced, which
is very difficult to stamp out, because, by the time it has reached a
pronounced stage, the men have learned so much about the politics, as
it were, of the job, as to interfere with the discipline.
If there be dissensions at headquarters, if the parties that control
the work are at war, and if the methods and performance of the manager
or superintendent be not absolutely satisfactory to every one of the
officials, nothing can be worse than to let a suspicion of this matter
get around among the men. How a general manager or superintendent can
prevent this, if an officer be disposed to talk, is a problem that no
attempt will here be made to solve. In reorganization, such a condition
is one for which the manager should be continually on the alert, and he
is advised to be suspicious of the time─keeper and storekeeper.
=Labor─Saving Devices Involving Plant.= If the men are in a reasonably
good state of discipline, it is feasible to make changes in the layout
involving special apparatus or plant; and in deciding upon such
measures, a question arises as to how much money it is justifiable
to spend for a new plant. A piece of work under reorganization
is ordinarily a piece of work that is more or less in financial
difficulties, and the purchase of plant for the economizing of the
work is usually looked upon by the officers as a dangerous move.
Particularly is this the case when any changes of this kind turn out to
be unsuccessful. A small amount of money wasted on special apparatus
is always in sight──at the scrap heap, if nowhere else──whereas a good
deal of money wasted in fruitless labor can be easily lost to view.
If the amount of saving on a certain operation by the installation
of special material be sufficient to pay for this material in a few
weeks, the purchase of the material can be immediately justified, and
the cost of the apparatus can be charged as _current expenses_ to be
shortly recovered in the economy of the work. Where expensive and heavy
machinery is to be installed, however, the matter should be gone into
with the greatest care and detail.
A few of the articles which come within the class chargeable to
_current expenses_, are:
1. The use of water jets for increasing the speed of drilling in soft
rock.
2. The use of hickory wands for stirring up sludge in drill holes, and
increasing the speed of drilling.
3. The use of special explosives and good exploding machines, and of
loading tubes for blasting.
4. Small grading machines for spreading earth and macadam.
5. Special wheelbarrows or carts for moving material.
6. Special small tools for the blacksmith, including a trough in which
he can set his bits to be hardened, with the points in the water.
7. A sufficient supply of picks and shovels.
Some of the items of plant that may be classed in the other category,
are:
1. Special wagons and scrapers for hauling earth.
2. Concrete mixers especially adapted to the work in hand.
3. Derricks.
4. Locomotive cranes.
5. Cableways.
6. Bit─sharpening machines.
=Labor─Saving Devices Involving No Plant.= Where the labor preparatory
to introducing the improved methods is considered, it should be taken
as equivalent to a plant charge as affecting the interest of the
contractor. If, for example, it has been the practice to drill and
blast immediately in front of a steam shovel on rock excavation, and
it is desired to have the drilling and blasting so far ahead of the
shovel as to avoid the occasional necessity of holding up the shovel,
the money involved in the work done ahead should be considered in the
nature of a temporary investment and charged to money expended on plant
which will not come back for a period of perhaps one month.
A steam─shovel crew has a good deal more pride in its work, and will
continue working under more disagreeable weather conditions, than a
drilling gang; and when drilling in front of a shovel, severe weather
conditions may cause the drilling work to stop without interrupting the
operation of the shovel. If, then, the drills are working too close to
the shovel, the shovel may catch them.
On the other hand, it is unwise to blast far ahead of the shovel, for
a number of reasons. In the first place, there is no advantage in
investing money in drill holes, except to avoid such a contingency
as outlined above. In the second place, it is impossible to tell how
effective the blasting has been until the shovel has attacked the
broken rock; and if the blasting is done far ahead of the shovel, poor
blasting may go undetected until an immense amount of financial damage
has been done.
To cite a specific instance──On a recent piece of important work, a cut
several hundred feet long was drilled to a depth of supposedly fourteen
feet, and blasted with more or less unsatisfactory results. The steam
shovel was then put in, and excavated to a depth of five or six feet.
The subsequent cut of from eight to nine feet deep had to be entirely
re─drilled and re─blasted. The drilling in the already partly broken
rock was immensely difficult, the drills sticking a great deal and a
good many of the holes having to be abandoned; while the blasting was
unsatisfactory because of the fissures.
The rapid reorganization of work can be furthered by the issuance of
_special instructions to foremen in the field_. This practice has been
admirably followed by Frank B. Gilbreth, and is described in his "Field
System." As illustrations of such orders, are the following to drill
and blasting foremen, issued on some recent work:
INSTRUCTIONS TO FOREMEN
RULES FOR DRILLING──
Drill foremen are requested to do their utmost to enforce the
following rules for drilling:
1. Each drill at the beginning of a hole is to be supplied with a
complete set of sharp bits and a pump, which will be laid alongside
of the drill tripod by the drill tender, under the directions of the
foreman.
2. As soon as a hole is finished, one of the muckers at the direction
of the foreman will assist the two drill runners to move the tripod;
and the mucker under the direction of the foreman will then pump out
the hole that has just been completed.
3. The foreman will then personally, with a wooden rod, measure the
depth of the hole, and punch said depth on the drillers' card, the
mucker placing a well─made round plug in the hole and hammering it
home.
4. Foremen will see that the drills are so distributed as to keep them
as near as possible to the manifold, from which the steam supply is
taken.
5. Pipe connections are to be made by a pipe─fitter who will be
assigned to each drill gang, and who may be assisted by the foreman
and by a mucker when necessary. No pipe─fitting is to be done by drill
runners or helpers unless absolutely necessary.
6. The time for drilling is from 8 A. M. until noon, and from 12.30
until 4.30 P. M.; and the moving of the dinkey supplying the drills
with steam is never to be done within those hours, unless absolutely
necessary, and when it is necessary, a note to that effect must be
made on the quarry card.
7. Whenever for any reason the drills are out of steam, the drill
foreman will indicate the time when the steam pressure failed and the
time when pressure was again turned on, with a reason why the pressure
gave out. This to be written on the quarry card.
8. Foremen will see that each drill is in proper working order,
and supplied with an exhaust pipe of the proper length and with a
throttle. Whenever for any reason a drill is not in perfect condition,
the foreman will immediately report it and make requisition through
the storekeeper for the necessary parts and repairs.
The attention of all concerned is particularly called to these rules,
the enforcement of which is essential to the economic performance of
the work; and all concerned are particularly urged to make a most
earnest effort to see that, as far as it is possible, every drill on
the work shall be in actual operation for 8 hours on every working day.
By order of,
RICHARD T. DANA, General Manager.
INSTRUCTIONS TO FOREMEN
RULES FOR THE GUIDANCE OF BLASTING FOREMEN──
Blasting foremen are requested to do their utmost to enforce the
following rules for the conduct of blasting operations:
1. Attention is called to the fact that dynamite will freeze in about
45° temperature, and that at this temperature, a little above or a
little below, dynamite is exceedingly sensitive to shocks, and should
be handled accordingly.
2. Whenever a part of the charge in a hole has been exploded, leaving
any unexploded dynamite in the hole, do not under any circumstances
blow out the unexploded dynamite with a steam jet. You may, however,
put a stick of dynamite down into the hole on top of the unexploded
powder and endeavor to fire the entire hole in this manner.
3. The blasting foreman will provide himself with a measured wooden
rod for tamping, and personally see that every hole that is loaded
is down to grade. If he should find any hole that is not down to
grade, he will immediately report the fact to the superintendent or
assistant superintendent on the work, and make a note of the same on
his time─card.
4. The attention of the foreman is called to the fact that dynamite is
not as efficient in a hole full of water as it is in a dry hole, and
every effort should be made to load the holes as dry as possible.
5. The tamping of the holes should be of the heaviest and stickiest
clay that can be obtained, and this tamping should extend the entire
length of the hole above the powder.
6. Never thaw dynamite in front of the fire, or on a hot stone removed
from a fire, or by piling sticks in a boiler or in an oven.
By order of,
RICHARD T. DANA, General Manager.
In hauling earth, the principal elements of team expense are the time
to haul and the standing still to load. This last item can be very
materially reduced by the simple expedient of having on the work an
extra wagon or two. A team can be changed from one wagon to another in
about one and a─half minutes, and the same number of teams on a short
haul will do easily 15 per cent more work by this trick.
The same principle applies to the mixing of concrete involving extra
wheelbarrows; and here it may be mentioned that the arrangement of the
concrete platform is seldom economical. The men, if left to themselves,
will usually not have sufficient runways, so that a man with a loaded
wheelbarrow will be painfully struggling up a plank, while a man with
an empty wheelbarrow is waiting for him to get out of the way. Much can
be accomplished by having the men move in procession so that no man
with a wheelbarrow will ever have to stand and wait for another man to
get out of his way. Of course the ideal method of handling concrete
into a mixer is to do it from bins with chutes; but the great majority
of this class of work is not done in this manner.
On contract work, the emergency charges for the moving of plant are
usually considerably higher than they ought to be, owing to the fact
that the work is done by men who are not especially skilful in this
kind of work. The direction of these processes should be given to a man
who is especially good at it; and the work should be provided with a
good supply of gin poles, snatch blocks, tackle, etc.
If a piece of work has been under personal observation for considerable
time, a great many sources of improvement in the performance can be
detected that are entirely invisible upon casual inspection; and the
student of economics is urged to devote a large amount of time to
the most careful and complete study of minor and apparently trivial
operations. Too much respect is usually given to established methods,
just because they are established methods; and the analysis of a
process that is apparently simple and of minor importance, but which
is repeated scores of times in a day, is nearly always given too
little importance as compared with the process that is elaborate and
complicated, and which may in itself be of great importance, but which,
on the particular work at hand, is dependent upon apparently minor
processes. To illustrate──A shovel, loading eight or nine thousand
yards of rock per month, was inspected; and the first impression
obtained was that the reason the shovel output was so small was because
of the inefficient layout of the shovel work itself. It was found,
however, that the shovel was actually able to work a good deal faster
than the drills and the blasting could provide broken rock for it; and
the ultimate solution of the problem was found in the reorganizing of
the drilling, in order to do more work with the same number of drills,
and in the use of improved methods in blasting. The handling of the
shovel took care of itself as soon as the other problems were solved.
The cost of spreading broken macadam on a road, to the average
contractor, is not far from 12 cents per cubic yard; and the work is
done with shovels and forks. This method is one that has been pursued
for a great many years; and there are very few contractors who realize
that it is exceedingly expensive. Some contractors, however, are doing
work of this kind with the aid of a road machine that requires for its
operation two or three men and four horses. A small grader machine that
can be operated by one man and two horses for rough spreading, assisted
by one man on the ground with a potato hook, has been known to do this
work for about 2 cents or less per cubic yard.
In bridge─erecting work, a great deal of money can be saved over
ordinary methods by the designing of special tools, such as dolly
bars; and a good system of keeping detailed cost on such work will be
sure to result advantageously. Much labor is lost in the erecting of
roof trusses and in the erection of trusses in general, by crude and
old─fashioned methods. The pneumatic riveter which strikes a great
many light blows per minute has revolutionized field riveting; but
the use of such a machine for cutting rivets has been unsuccessful in
competition with hand labor on at least one large piece of work in New
York City.
In painting, considerable time is ordinarily lost by the painters in
preparing their own staging. Whenever possible, these preparations
should be done for them under the direction of a skilled man; and the
use of small winches on the staging whereby the painters can quickly
raise and lower themselves, has been found of great value.
On contract work, the blacksmith is in a position peculiar to himself.
He is classed as an expert, paid by the month, and is supposed somehow
to get all the work done that comes to him. He has general charge
of his department, and he gets very few orders and practically no
instruction from the superintendent or manager. He is nearly always
an interesting personality, and, outside of a very limited field,
extraordinarily ignorant. The excuse on a great deal of uneconomical
work is that it is impossible to get a competent blacksmith who knows
how to do the work that he is called upon to perform. Tools will not
hold their edge, or they break. Upon the matter being referred to the
blacksmith, he will usually come back with a complaint about his coal,
or the grade of steel with which he is supplied, or his tempering
solution, or the condition of his forge. He should be provided with a
thoroughly good set of tools, and the superintendent should know that
his tools are of the best. He should next be carefully and thoroughly
instructed as to how to harden and temper steel. A convenient shop for
the blacksmith, and proper methods of forging and tempering, will add
incalculable value to the organization.
=Introduction of New Methods.= It should be adopted as a cardinal
principle, that there are no methods in the field which are not capable
of improvement along the line of economy; and it should be remembered
that a very small improvement in any one method is invariably worth
a great deal of thought and time in arriving at it. The systematic
perusal of the proceedings of the engineering societies and the
engineering press, will result in the suggestion of new and improved
methods and of a good many bad and unimproved methods; and the trained
expert should be able to sift the wheat from the chaff, and apply only
such as will fit his special needs.
The literature of shop development and shop economics is rich in
illustrations and suggestions that can be adapted to field work, and
should be gone over very carefully for this purpose. In this connection
it should be urged that it is a duty of a professional man to publish
new methods. There is no room for argument on the proposition that the
principle of free trade, showing the other fellow two blades of grass
growing where one grew before, is an advantage to all concerned.
=Design of New Methods.= When there is crying need for improved methods
in the field on account of special necessity, it behooves the man in
charge to invent improved methods and design improved apparatus. The
cardinal elements of such design include the following:
1. Simplicity.
2. Low first cost, so that if the experiment is not successful,
nothing will be lost.
3. The use of standard sizes of material.
4. Generality of application.