The standardizing of a product, a tool, a process or a relation, depends upon the removal of as many as possible of the variable or uncertain factors. What may be a standard under one set of productive con ditions may be entirely set aside under another, be cause some uncertainty connected with the old stand ard has been removed. The measure, therefore, that is used in a factory in determining its productive ef ficiency, or the efficiency of any part Of the productive process, is the lowest possible time in which each piece of work can be completed. This is known as the standard time. A standard time, however, is simply the reduction of a product to its lowest terms, the product being made up of a number of other prede termined standards.
5. Standard time as determined by experience.— When a foreman turns over a job to a workman and says, "John, this ought to take you one hour," it is very doubtful, in the majority of cases, that either of them has the slightest idea of the immense amount of study and work which lies back of this simple state ment. The standard time for this job in the mind of the foreman is one hour. But why it should be one hour rather than some other time he could tell only by saying that he had found this to be about right after years of experience; and he might even add that this was the standard time in all the shops that he knew, and that the foreman before him had worked under the same conditions. This is the method by which standard times in both the shop and the office have been established, and it represents the way in which rule-of-thumb standards have developed. Probably years of time, thousands of men, and hun dreds of thousands of jobs have contributed to the ex periment of which the total outcome was summed up in the foreman's direction: "John, this ought to take you one hour." 6. New conditions make time-standard hard to obtain.—Modern investigations show that standard times which have been determined by tbe experience of the past are not always safe guides. The man who can do the work does not necessarily knowlhe best way to do it. Air. Gantt gives a record of a plant where the standard times in the running of a loom were based upon usual practice. The manager, however, after a short investigation considered the plant ready to adopt scientific management ; accordingly he adopted an arbitrary new standard time. He put a weaver at work upon a loom, but on the very first day the schedule broke down. The next two weeks were spent by the management in studying the ad justing of the parts, and in getting the bobbins filled properly so that the loom would be uniform and standardized. Not
until all this had been done could the management in fairness ask the worker to do the job in the new stand ard time. Then he did it, and the weaving was gradu ally accomplished on the new basis.
7. Some general considerations in standard times.— The determination of the time-standard is one of the biggest problems before every factory and office of to day. It involves the whole question of time- and mo tion-studies besides many problems of human fatigue, and the like. Therefore, there will be no attempt here to do more than point out some general considerations which should be observed in arriving at standard times. A study of them may serve as a caution to those man agers who lose sight of the very important element of time when planning a reorganization of their factory or office, and who expect to get results within a few months or a year. The necessity for time-standards will be evident when the following conditions with all their variable factors are considered.
8. To attain standard times in a conditions in the shop so different from the state of affairs of only fifteen years ago, have in general been brought about by (1) the introduction of high-speed steel for cutting tools ; ( 2) the use of devices for hand ling modern material; (3) the provision of better working conditions. The first of these factors has affected the rate of production dependent on the ma chine ; the second has established qui& relations be tween men and machines; while the third has increased the rate of production on the part of the men. It will be necessary here to speak of the effect of the first two factors only.
9. Standardize machines before getting standard regard to the revolutionary effect upon fac tory work, the introduction of high-speed cutting tools stands next to the invention of the steam engine itself. Hence, before standard times can be estab lished, the investigator must consider (1) the charac ter and limitations of the existing machine tools; (2) the correct shapes for the cutting tools; (3) the proper temper of the steel tools; (4) the best running condi tions as provided by various cooling agents, etc., and (5) the maximum speeds. All these factors having been standardized, the time that machine work should take may be easily calculated by reference to slide rules prepared for these data. But the work done by the workmen is a more difficult matter to determine notwithstanding the magnitude of the task which has just been mentioned.