Fatigue Study
Frank Gilbreth, Lillian Gilbreth, 1916
Why do some people leave work bright after the same day, while others can barely stay on their feet? In 1916 the engineer Frank Gilbreth and the psychologist Lillian Gilbreth called unnecessary fatigue a pointless loss of human life, and showed how to find it and remove it. A book about breaks, seats, light, order and ways of working that let you do more and tire less.
Who it is for
For managers who want people to leave work not drained, and for everyone who gets more tired at the workplace than they should.
Twice the fatigue requires more than twice the rest.
Why some people leave work with their heads held high
Picture the gate of a factory at the end of a shift. A crowd comes out. Some almost run home, others walk unhurriedly. Someone holds his head high and looks pleased, while someone else trudges along with drooping shoulders, as if life were not worth the effort. They all worked the same day. So why do they look so different?
Frank Gilbreth, an engineer, and Lillian Gilbreth, a psychologist, a husband and wife who studied human work down to a single movement of the hand, open their 1916 book with this question. Their answer: the difference lies above all in fatigue. Fatigue in itself is normal, it is the trace of any work. But it has a treacherous property. A small fatigue is easy to shake off if you rest at once. Twice the fatigue requires more than twice the rest, and a heavily accumulated fatigue may demand rest almost without end. That is why fatigue that is not shaken off in time costs the most.
The Gilbreths divide it into two kinds. Necessary fatigue remains from work that has to be done. Unnecessary fatigue remains from extra effort: an uncomfortable seat, superfluous movements, poor order. Unnecessary fatigue, they say, is always caused by someone's ignorance, and so it can be removed. Frederick Taylor had already begun to divide work into small segments and to separate segments of work from segments of rest. The Gilbreths go further: for them fatigue is the same loss as spoiled material, except that what is lost is not metal but a part of human life.
The book works at two speeds. There are simple, cheap and obvious steps that can be taken tomorrow morning. And there are precise measurements that make the improvements last. Next, in order: how to see fatigue, what to remove today, and how to arrange work so that the evening still leaves strength for life.
Before you change anything, sit on every chair
The Gilbreths advise starting not with changes but with a record. The fatigue study, as they call it, describes work as it is: who works, under what conditions, with what movements and at which hours fatigue is strongest. It has to be done before any changes, or there will be nothing to compare with later. It is best to start where fatigue is greatest, and with the workers who are glad to help.
By the authors' experience, the best person to make such a study is the owner himself. But something curious happens to him. Walking through the shop floor arouses his interest, but real eagerness appears only when he sits down on every chair himself and tries to work at every station. Such a day, in the Gilbreths' words, always pays off.
Why is it not enough just to look? Someone who has worked here for years is too used to local ways to notice small things. And small things turn out to matter later. So the authors offer a simple method. Find two workers who are alike in strength and build, working in the same conditions. If one of them does more or tires less, the difference is almost certainly in the way of working, and that way is worth writing down.
The person doing the study writes down his own ideas for improvement separately, at the end of the report. Otherwise the reader stops thinking for himself, and obvious advice makes him take everything else as obvious too.
Sometimes the study reveals that the solution already exists. In Providence the Gilbreths assembled a fatigue museum, a collection of simple devices that relieve unnecessary strain. Managers often answered that they had never thought about fatigue and had nothing to send them. Then, walking round the plant, the authors would point at some stand or seat and hear: “Oh, that. It really does take the strain off, I never looked at it that way. We've always had it.” Removing fatigue means not only learning what is missing, but really using what is already there.
About the author
Frank Gilbreth (1868-1924) was an American engineer who studied movement in work. Lillian Gilbreth (1878-1972), his wife and co-author, a psychologist, carried on their work after his death. The Gilbreths had twelve children, and two of them wrote a book about the family, “Cheaper by the Dozen”.
All books by this author: Frank Gilbreth, Lillian Gilbreth
Terms from the book
- Taylor
- tram driver
- piece-rate pay
- fatigue study: The Gilbreths' term: a detailed record of how people work now and where they tire most. It is made before any change, so there is something to compare with later.
- Providence: A city in the north-east of the United States, capital of the state of Rhode Island. The Gilbreths worked there, and the factories where they tested their methods were located there.
- fatigue museum: The Gilbreths' project: a collection of simple devices that relieve unnecessary fatigue, with photographs and descriptions. The first such museum began with three chairs and two devices for feeding material.
- Home Reading Box: The Gilbreths' initiative: a box by the exit from the shop, where offices and families put the magazines, newspapers and catalogues they had read, and workers freely took them to read and carried them home.
- nickel-plated: Coated with a thin layer of nickel. Such a coating shines and protects the metal from rust.
- piece rate: The payment per unit of output under piece-rate pay. In Taylor's system a rate once set could not be lowered.
- New England Butt: The New England Butt Company of Providence, whose products included machines for braiding tape and cord. The Gilbreths studied and rebuilt the work there.
- braiding machine: A machine that braids threads into tape, cord or the braided sheath for wires.
- package: In the Gilbreths' book: a lattice rack beside the work table, on which parts hang in assembly order so that they are easy to take.
- skill transfer: The Gilbreths' concept: each person teaches others what he can do and masters more complex work himself. They considered it one of the signs that fatigue had been reduced.
- Happiness Minutes: The Gilbreths' expression, in English Happiness Minutes: the time a person has lived happily. They considered it the final measure of any change in work.
All terms
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