Time and Motion
By Hyon O'Brien
Most people haven't heard of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, pioneers in the field of time and motion study. I came upon them when I picked up a most entertaining book called ``Cheaper by the Dozen" (1948) at a public library many years ago.
It is a family biography humorously telling the story of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who worked together as motion study experts while raising their twelve children. The book was co-authored by their son and daughter; the title comes from Frank's humorous response to questions or comments about the large size of his family.
Frank Gilbreth (1868-1924) worked as a building contractor as a young man. Perhaps he was a bit lazy (someone said that ``efficiency is an intelligent laziness") and wanted to do his job with the least possible effort, or perhaps it was just his particular mindset that led him to his life work of motion study. He began to carefully observe the actions of bricklayers as they worked. By redesigning the task, he was able to reduce the number of motions required to lay a brick from 18 to 5 and at the same time decrease fatigue and increase productivity.
This discovery began his career as he continued to research the issue of efficiency in manual motion. He discovered that for a worker to accomplish any manual task, there are 18 elements of fundamental hand motions he or she performs. The 18 elements that he identified and named ``Therblig" (his family name spelled backward) are ``search, find, select, grasp, hold, position, assemble, use, dissemble, inspect, transport loaded, transport unloaded, pre-position for next operation, release load, avoidable delay, unavoidable delay, plan, and rest to overcome fatigue."
Teamed with his wife Lillian (1878-1972), who became a leading American industrial psychologist, they worked together to enhance efficiency in the workplace by eliminating unnecessary movements. His early death in 1924 did not stop Lillian Gilbreth, a remarkable woman in her own right, from dedicating the rest of her life to time and motion study as an engineering and management technique. Their pioneering theory contributed to higher production with less fatigue during World War II in the production of weapons by the U.S. government.
The Gilbreths were the first to propose that a surgical nurse serve as ``caddy" to a surgeon by handing surgical instruments to the surgeon upon request to increaser the efficiency of a medical operation. We owe to them enhanced efficiency not just in hospitals and factories but in office layouts and in the designs of household appliances that we take for granted every day. Their theory is being utilized everywhere, every day; even in supermarkets and every store, one way or another.
Another notable American engineer in this field we need to thank is F.W. Taylor (1856-1915), a father of the time efficiency movement and ``scientific management". He elaborated on the four ``Taylor's Principles:"
1.
Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2.
Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3.
Provide detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task.
4.
Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
For the Lunar New Year, the Friends of Love charity group (www.friends.or.kr) delivered 3,000 baskets of rice cake to those in need. It collected funds (Korea Exchange Bank and Samsung Foundation donated two-thirds of the needed money, BRAVO!) and bought all the ingredients for rice cake soup (the traditional food for the first day of the lunar New Year) and packaged 3,000 baskets for delivery to people in need, including a homeless shelter behind Seoul Station. Many volunteers came together to do the work. I was assigned to cut open the boxes of rice cake packages with two other people. The three of us handled hundreds of boxes and by trial and error we developed a system that I think the Gilbreths and F.W. Taylor would have been quite proud of.
Every time I work in my kitchen, I thank Frank and Lillian Gilbreth for their contribution to the world of the concept of time and motion study and its practical and efficient application in our daily lives. I compare my kitchen to my mother's Korean kitchen in our old house in Wonju, Gangwon Province. My mother spent a big part of her life in a space that was arranged without a hint of any concession to convenience. When I think of the years she spent in that backward kitchen with wasted steps and discomfort because things were arranged either too high, or too low, or too far from her reach, it makes me angry ― and even more appreciative of my good fortune to have been born 30 years later, which made it possible to live with relatively efficient layout plans in every living space (to say nothing of the labor-saving appliances).
We should all give our heartfelt thanks to the Gilbreths and Taylor for humanizing the workplace and improving our standard of living many notches, while saving us all a lot of time and motion. As Frank Gilbreth said, ``It is cheaper and more productive to design machines to fit men rather than try and force men to fit machines."
Hyon O'Brien, a former reference librarian in the United States, has returned to Korea after 32 years of living abroad. She can be reached at hyonobrien@gmail.com.