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Supplement to
Chapter 9
Work study
Introduction
A tale is told of Frank Gilbreth (the founder of method study) addressing a scientific conference
with a paper entitled ‘The best way to get dressed in a morning’. In his presentation,
he rather bemused the scientific audience by analysing the ‘best’ way of buttoning up one’s
waistcoat in the morning. Among his conclusions was that waistcoats should always be buttoned
from the bottom upwards. (To make it easier to straighten his tie in the same motion;
buttoning from the top downwards requires the hands to be raised again.) Think of this
example if you want to understand scientific management and method study in particular.
First of all, he is quite right. Method study and the other techniques of scientific management
may often be without any intellectual or scientific validation, but by and large they work in
their own terms. Second, Gilbreth reached his conclusion by a systematic and critical analysis
of what motions were necessary to do the job. Again, these are characteristics of scientific
management – detailed analysis and painstakingly systematic examination. Third (and
possibly most important), the results are relatively trivial. A great deal of effort was put into
reaching a conclusion that was unlikely to have any earth-shattering consequences. Indeed,
one of the criticisms of scientific management, as developed in the early part of the twentieth
century, is that it concentrated on relatively limited, and sometimes trivial, objectives.
The responsibility for its application, however, has moved away from specialist ‘time and
motion’ staff to the employees who can use such principles to improve what they do and
how they do it. Further, some of the methods and techniques of scientific management, as
opposed to its philosophy (especially those which come under the general heading of
‘method study’), can in practice prove useful in critically re-examining job designs. It is the
practicality of these techniques which possibly explains why they are still influential in job
design almost a century after their inception.
Method study in job design
Method study is a systematic approach to finding the best method. There are six steps:
1 Select the work to be studied.
2 Record all the relevant facts of the present method.
3 Examine those facts critically and in sequence.
4 Develop the most practical, economic and effective method.
5 Install the new method.
6 Maintain the method by periodically checking it in use.
Step 1 – Selecting the work to be studied
Most operations have many hundreds and possibly thousands of discrete jobs and activities
which could be subjected to study. The first stage in method study is to select those jobs
to be studied which will give the most return on the investment of the time spent studying