(OS1) is founded on principles introduced in the late 1800’s by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor pioneered time and motion studies. One of his most famous experiments was a landmark study on improving productivity in the steel industry.
Using Bethlehem Steel as his laboratory, Taylor tested two of the company’s best coal shovelers to determine how much material they were able to move. With stopwatches and notebooks, Taylor measured the weight of each scoop, how many loads were moved, and how long it took to do it. He determined the men moved about 20 tons of coal per day with scoops that weighed 38 pounds each.
Then Taylor cut the shovels so each would hold only about 34 pounds. Each worker’s productivity went up – from 20 tons per day to 30. Taylor again cut the shovels, reducing the scoop load to 30 pounds. Once again, the men were able to actually shovel more coal than before. By reducing the shovel load and tracking the results Taylor and his men were able to average shoveling 60 tons of coal per day with a 21 1/2 pound shovel scoop.
He later testified before Congress, “When we went to the Bethlehem Steel Co. we found from 400 to 600 men at work in that yard, and when we got through 140 men were doing the work of the 400 to 600, and these men handled several million tons of material a year…the cost of handling a ton was brought down from between 7 and 8 cents to between 3 and 4 cents and the actual saving (to the company) was at the rate of $78,000 a year.”
But there were other benefits as well. All those men that used to shovel coal were moved inside the plant to help keep up with increased capacity. And the coal shovelers themselves made an average of 60% more than their peers who worked for competitors. Perhaps best of all, the increased productivity resulted in less fatigue for the workers.
Taylor’s goal was to identify the one best way to perform work. ManageMen decided to build its cleaning system on the same principle. They would develop a set of rules for operating a cleaning organization at the highest level.