8. Gantt task-and-bonus plan.—With a view to combining all the good features of the previous meth ods, Mr. H. L. Gantt introduced what has become known as the task-and-bonus plan. Under this scheme the workman is assured his day rate as under the Halsey plan. A careful study is made of the work and conditions, to determine just what a good performance should be, and a definite task is as signed to the workman. If he equals or exceeds this standard record he is given a bonus in the form of an extra time-allowance. The plan in effect gives day pay if the task is not performed and piecework pay if the bonus is earned. Mr. Gantt lays gieat stress on the importance of training men to enable them to earn the bonus, thus utilizing labor as he finds it and not excluding the mediocre man who, in the beginning, might not be able to make a bonus, but who may easily do so under proper instruction. The methods of securing records of labor costs under this system must take cognizance, therefore, of sev eral factors, and special provision must be made for getting such records.
9. Emerson system.—The system introduced by Harrington Emerson assures the workman of his day's pay as does the Halsey plan. Like Taylor and Gantt, Emerson makes a careful study of the work and establishes a standard performance. A large bonus is given the workman if he attains this standard performance, but smaller bonuses may be earned be fore he reaches it, very much as in the Halsey plan, so that the worker's wages vary with his efforts. No bonus is paid, however, until the worker has raised his output to two-thirds of the standard, or, as Em erson expresses it, until his "efficiency" is 66i per cent.
Thus, if the time set for a certain piece of work is 120 hours, and the worker performs the task in this time his "efficiency" is one hundred per cent, and he receives a bonus of twenty cents for every dollar of day-rate wages to which he is entitled. Should he do
the work in one hundred hours his efficiency is 120 per cent, and his bonus is forty cents for every dollar of wages. While should he take 160 hours for the work his efficiency is seventy-five per cent and his bonus is only fifteen cents per dollar of wages.
10. Resume of wage systems.—In all of these ad vanced methods of rewarding labor, where a bonus is given for the perfOrmance of a definite task, it is the expectation that the task set is about what the workman should and can do. In the best types of advanced management, also, the workman is given every possible aid that will assist him to accomplish the task and earn the bonus. If this can be done, the labor costs, under these methods, should not vary greatly, tho at first sight this would not seem to be the case.
These new methods of time-study and the predic tion of manufacturing performances should be care fully noted. Such predictions are, in general, diffi cult because of the elusive character of the labor ele ment; and recorded costs, while presenting accurate records of what has been done, are not necessarily a criterion of what can be done. These new pay systems, furthermore, involve more than changes in the actual methods of rewarding labor. They in volve changes in management, and if managers are to predict performances and costs, and there is no doubt that they will, an accurate cost system that will give them the necessary information for so doing will be an absolute necessity.
The new methods of finding these costs may, how ever, be somewhat different from those in common use at present, which are based on the idea of recording they are found rather than as they should be.