# Shop Management  ## Metadata - Author: [[Frederick Winslow Taylor]] - Full Title: Shop Management - Category: #books ## Highlights - In examining the organization of works of this class, it will frequently be found that the management of the particular department in which this master spirit has grown up towers to a high point of excellence, his success having been due to a thorough knowledge of all of the smallest requirements of his section, obtained through personal contact, and the gradual training of the men under him to their maximum efficiency. The remaining departments, in which this man has had but little personal experience, will often present equally glaring examples of inefficiency. ([Location 11](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=11)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - The art of management has been defined, "as knowing exactly what you want men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way.'" ([Location 45](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=45)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - What the workmen want from their employers beyond anything else is high wages, and what employers want from their workmen most of all is a low labor cost of manufacture. These two conditions are not diametrically opposed to one another as would appear at first glance. On the contrary, they can be made to go together in all classes of work, without exception, and in the writer's judgment the existence or absence of these two elements forms the best index to either good or bad management. This book is written mainly with the object of advocating high wages and low labor cost as the foundation of the best management, of pointing out the general principles which render it possible to maintain these conditions even under the most trying circumstances, and of indicating the various steps which the writer thinks should be taken in changing from a poor system to a better type of management. ([Location 56](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=56)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - The possibility of coupling high wages with a low labor cost rests mainly upon the enormous difference between the amount of work which a first-class man can do under favorable circumstances and the work which is actually done by the average man. That there is a difference between the average and the first-class man is known to all employers, but that the first-class man can do in most cases from two to four times as much as is done by an average man is known to but few, and is fully realized only by those who have made a thorough and scientific study of the possibilities of men. ([Location 78](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=78)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - The difference in the output of first-class and average men is as little realized by the workmen as by their employers. The first-class men know that they can do more work than the average, but they have rarely made any careful study of the matter. And the writer has over and over again found them utterly incredulous when he informed them, after close observation and study, how much they were able to do. In fact, in most cases when first told that they are able to do two or three times as much as they have done they take it as a joke and will not believe that one is in earnest. ([Location 85](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=85)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - The second and equally interesting fact upon which the possibility of coupling high wages with low labor cost rests, is that first-class men are not only willing but glad to work at their maximum speed, providing they are paid from 30 to 100 per cent more than the average of their trade. ([Location 91](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=91)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - It is the writer's judgment, on the other hand, that for their own good it is as important that workmen should not be very much over-paid, as it is that they should not be under-paid. If over-paid, many will work irregularly and tend to become more or less shiftless, extravagant, arid dissipated. It does not do for most men to get rich too fast. The writer's observation, however, would lead him to the conclusion that most men tend to become more instead of less thrifty when they receive the proper increase for an extra hard day's work, as, for example, the percentages of increase referred to above. They live rather better, begin to save money, become more sober, and work more steadily. ([Location 106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=106)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - By high wages he means wages which are high only with relation to the average of the class to which the man belongs and which are paid only to those who do much more or better work than the average of their class. He would not for an instant advocate the use of a high-priced tradesman to do the work which could be done by a trained laborer or a lower-priced man. ([Location 112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=112)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - To summarize, then, what the aim in each establishment should be: (a) That each workman should be given as far as possible the highest grade of work for which his ability and physique fit him. (b) That each workman should be called upon to turn out the maximum amount of work which a first-rate man of his class can do and thrive. (c) That each workman, when he works at the best pace of a first-class man, should be paid from 30 per cent to 100 per cent according to the nature of the work which he does, beyond the average of his class. ([Location 125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=125)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - This common tendency to "take it easy" is greatly increased by bringing a number of men together on similar work and at a uniform standard rate of pay by the day. Under this plan the better men gradually but surely slow down their gait to that of the poorest and least efficient. When a naturally energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one, the logic of the situation is unanswerable: "Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow gets the same pay that I do and does only half as much work?" ([Location 150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=150)) - Tags: [[aqua]] - In many cases the employer will feel almost certain that a given job can be done faster than it has been, but he rarely cares to take the drastic measures necessary to force men to do it in the quickest time, unless he has an actual record, proving conclusively how fast the work can be done. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0084AH2X6&location=177)) - Tags: [[aqua]]