CHAPTER V
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS
DEFINITION OF ANALYSIS.--"Analysis," says the Century Dictionary is "the resolution or separation of anything which is compound, as a conception, a sentence, a material substance or an event, into its constituent elements or into its causes;" that is to say, analysis is the division of the thing under consideration into its definite cause, and into its definite parts or elements, and the explanation of the principle upon which such division is made.[1]
DEFINITION OF SYNTHESIS.--"Synthesis" is, "a putting of two or more things together; composition; specifically, the combination of separate elements of objects of thought into a whole, as of simple into compound or complex conceptions, and individual propositions into a system."
USE OF ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS BY PSYCHOLOGY.--Analysis is defined by Sully as follows: "Analysis" is "taking apart more complex processes in order to single out for special inspection their several constituent processes."
He divides elements of thought activity into two
"(a) analysis: abstraction (b) synthesis: comparison."
Speaking of the latter, he says, "The clear explicit detachment in thought of the common elements which comparison secures allows of a new reconstructive synthesis of things as made up of particular groupings of a number of general qualities."
PLACE OF ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS IN MANAGEMENT.--Any study of management which aims to prove that management may be, and under Scientific Management is, a science, must investigate its use of analysis and of synthesis.[2] Upon the degree and perfection of the analysis depends the permanent value and usefulness of the knowledge gained. Upon the synthesis, and what it includes and excludes, depends the efficiency of the results deduced.
LITTLE ANALYSIS OR SYNTHESIS UNDER TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT.-- Under Traditional Management analysis and synthesis are so seldom present as to be negligible. Success or failure are seldom if ever so studied and measured that the causes are well understood. Therefore, no standards for future work that are of any value can be established. It need only be added that one reason why Traditional Management makes so little progress is because it makes no analyses that are of permanent value. What data it has are available for immediate use only. Practically every man who does the work must "start at the beginning," for himself. If this is often true of entire methods, it is even more true of elements of methods. As elements are not studied and recorded separately, they are not recognized when they appear again, and the resultant waste is appalling. This waste is inevitable with the lack of cooeperation under Traditional Management and the fact that each worker plans the greater part of his work for himself.
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS APPEAR LATE IN TRANSITORY MANAGEMENT.-- Division of output appears early in Transitory Management, but it is usually not until a late stage that motion study and time study are conducted so successfully that scientifically determined and timed elements can be constructed into standards. As everything that is attempted in the line of analysis and synthesis under Transitory Management is done scientifically under Scientific Management, we may avoid repetition by considering Scientific Management at once.
RELATION OF ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS IN SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT TO MEASUREMENT AND STANDARDIZATION.--Analysis considers the subject that is to be measured,--be it individual action or output of any kind,--and divides it into such a number of parts, and parts of such a nature, as will best suit the purpose for which the measurement is taken. When these subdivisions have been measured, synthesis combines them into a whole.[3] Under Scientific Management, through the measurements used, synthesis is a combination of those elements which are necessary only, and which have been proven to be most efficient. The result of the synthesis is standardized, and used until a more accurate standard displaces it.
Under Scientific Management analysis and synthesis are methods of determining standards from available knowledge. Measurement furnishes the means.
ANALYST'S WORK IS DIVISION.--It is the duty of the analyst to divide the work that he is set to study into the minutest divisions possible. What is possible is determined by the time and money that can be set aside for the investigation.
THE NATURE OF THE WORK MUST DETERMINE THE AMOUNT OF ANALYSIS PRACTICABLE.--In determining the amount of time and money required, it is necessary to consider--
1. the cost of the work if done with no special study. 2. how many times the work is likely to be repeated. 3. how many elements that it contains are likely to be similar to elements in work that has already been studied. 4. how many new elements that it contains are likely to be available in subsequent work. 5. the probable cost of the work after it has been studied-- (a) the cost of doing it. (b) the cost of the investigation. 6. The loss, if any, from delaying the work until after it has been studied. 7. the availability of trained observers and measurers, analysts and synthesists. 8. the available money for carrying on the investigations.
These questions at least must be answered before it is possible to decide whether study shall be made or not, and to what degree it can be carried.
COST THE DETERMINING FACTOR.--It is obvious that in all observation in the industrial world cost must be the principal determining feature. Once the cost can be estimated, and the amount of money that can be allowed for the investigation determined, it is possible at least to approximate satisfactory answers to the other questions. How closely the answers approximate depends largely on the skill and experience of the analyst.
The greater number of times the work is to be repeated, the less the ultimate cost. The more elements contained similar to elements already determined, the less the additional cost, and the less the time necessary. The more elements contained that can be used again, even in different work, the less the ultimate cost. The better trained the analyst, the less the immediate or additional cost and time.
Much depends on the amount of previous data at hand when the investigation is being made, and on the skill and speed of the analyst in using these data.
PROCESS OF DIVISION UNENDING.--In practice, the process of division continues as long as it can show itself to be a method for cost reducing. Work may be divided into processes: each process into subdivisions; each subdivision into cycles; each cycle into elements; each element into time units; each time unit into motions,--and so on, indefinitely, toward the "indivisible minimum."[4]
MEASURING MAY TAKE PLACE AT ANY STAGE.--At any of these stages of division the results may be taken as final for the purpose of the study,--and the operations, or final divisions of the work at that stage, may be measured.
To obtain results with the least expenditure of time, the operations must be subjected to motion study before they are timed as well as after. This motion study can be accurate and of permanent value only in so far as the divisions are final. The resulting improved operations are then ready to be timed.
ULTIMATE ANALYSIS THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGY.--When the analyst has proceeded as far as he can in dividing the work into prime factors the problem continues in the field of psychology. Here the opportunities for securing further data become almost limitless.
ULTIMATE ANALYSIS JUSTIFIABLE.--It is the justification for analysis to approach the ultimate as nearly as possible, that the smaller and more difficult of measurement the division is, the more often it will appear in various combinations of elements. The permanence and exactness of the result vary with the effort for obtaining it.
QUALIFICATIONS OF AN ANALYST.--To be most successful, an analyst should have ingenuity, patience, and that love of dividing a process into its component parts and studying each separate part that characterizes the analytic mind. The analyst must be capable of doing accurate work, and orderly work.
To get the most pleasure and profit from his work he should realize that his great, underlying purpose is to relieve the worker of unnecessary fatigue, to shorten his work period per day, and to increase the number of his days and years of higher earning power. With this realization will come an added interest in his subject.
WORKER SHOULD UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS OF ANALYSIS.--It is not enough that the worker should understand the methods of measurement. He can get most from the resultant standards and will most efficiently cooeperate if he understands the division into elements to be studied.
SCHOOLS SHOULD PROVIDE TRAINING.--Much of the training in analysis in the schools comes at such a late period of the course that the average industrial worker must miss a large part of it. This is a defect in school training that should be remedied. Even very young children soon are capable of, and greatly enjoy, dividing a process into elements. If the worker be taught, in his preparations, and in the work itself, to divide what he does into its elements, he will not only enjoy analysis of his work, but will be able to follow the analysis in his own mind, and to cooeperate better in the processes of measurement.
THE SYNTHESIST'S WORK IS SELECTION AND ADDITION.--The synthesist studies the individual results of the analyst's work, and their inter-relation, and determines which of these should be combined, and in what manner, for the most economic result. His duty is to construct that combination of the elements which will be most efficient.
IMPORTANCE OF SELECTION MUST BE EMPHASIZED.--If synthesis in Scientific Management were nothing more than combining all the elements that result from analysis into a whole, it would be valuable. Any process studied analytically will be performed more intelligently, even if there is no change in the method.
But the most important part of the synthesist's work is the actual elimination of elements which are useless, and the combination of the remaining elements in such a way, or sequence, or schedule, that a far better method than the one analyzed will result.
We may take an example from Bricklaying.[5] In "Stringing Mortar Method, on the Filling Tiers before the Days of the Pack-on-the-Wall-Method"--the division, which was into operations only, showed eighteen operations and eighteen motions for every brick that was laid. Study and synthesis of these elements resulted in a method that required only 1 3/4 motions to lay a brick. Over half the original motions were found to be useless, hence entirely omitted. In several other cases it was found possible to make one motion do work for two or four brick, with the same, or less, fatigue to the worker.
RESULT IS THE BASIS FOR THE TASK.--The result of synthesis is the basis for the task,--it becomes the standard that shows what has actually been done, and what can be expected to be repeated. It is important to note the relation between the task and synthesis. When it becomes generally understood that the "Task," under Scientific Management is neither an ideal which exists simply in the imagination, nor an impossibly high estimate of what can be expected,--but is actually the sum of observed and timed operations, plus a definite and sufficient percentage of allowance for overcoming the fatigue,--then much objection to it will cease.
GENERAL LACK OF KNOWLEDGE THE CHIEF CAUSE OF OBJECTION TO THE TASK.--As is the case with most objections to Scientific Management, or its elements, ignorance is the chief obstacle to the introduction and success of the Task Idea. This ignorance seems to be more or less prevalent everywhere among managers as well as workers.
Scientific Management can, and does, succeed even when the workers are ignorant of many of its fundamental principles, but it will never make the strides that it should until every man working under it, as well as all outside, understand _why_ it is doing as it does, as well as _what_ is done.
This educational campaign could find no better starting point than the word "task," and the "task idea."
THE NAME TASK IS UNFORTUNATE.[6]--The Century Dictionary defines "Task" as follows:
1. "a tax, an assessment, an impost 2. "labor imposed, especially a definite quantity or amount of labor; work to be done; one's stint; that which duty or necessity imposes; duty or duties collectively 3. "a lesson to be learned; a portion of study imposed by a teacher 4. "work undertaken,--an undertaking 5. "burdensome employment; toil."
Only the fourth meaning, as here given, covers in any way what is meant by the task in Scientific Management.
The ideas included in the other four definitions are most unpleasant. The thought of labor; the thought that the labor is imposed; the thought that the imposition is definite; that duty makes it necessary that it be done; that it is burdensome; that it is toilsome: these are most unfortunate ideas and have been associated with the word so long in the human mind that it will be a matter of years before a new set of associations can be formed which will be pleasant, and which will render the word "task" attractive and agreeable to the worker and to the public in general.
NO OTHER ADEQUATE WORD HAS BEEN SUGGESTED.--However, there seems to be no better word forthcoming; therefore, one can but follow the example of the masters in management, who have accepted this word, and have done their best to make it attractive by the way they themselves have used it.
To the writer, the word "stint" is far more attractive and more truly descriptive than is "task." Perhaps because of the old-fashioned idea that a reward, usually immediate, followed the completion of the "stint."
Opinions as to a preferable word will doubtless vary, but it is self-evident that the word "task" has already become so firmly established in Scientific Management that any attempt to change it would result in a confusion. It is far better to concentrate on developing a new set of associations for it in as many minds as possible.
DECIDED ADVANTAGE TO THE USE OF THE WORD TASK.--Perhaps in one way it is fortunate that the use of the word "task" does coincide more or less with the use of that word under Traditional Management. Under Traditional Management the task is the work to be done. It may be just as well that the same word should be used under Scientific Management, in order that both the worker and investigator may realize, that, after all _the work that is to be done_ is, in its essentials, exactly the same. With this realization from the beginning, the mind of the worker or investigator may be the more predisposed to note the eliminations of waste and the cutting down of time, effort and fatigue under the scientifically derived methods.
DEFINITION OF TASK AS USED IN SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT.--The task, under Scientific Management, differs from the task under Traditional Management in that--
1. The tools and surrounding conditions with which the work shall be done are standardized. 2. The method in which the work shall be done is prescribed. 3. The time that the work shall take is scientifically determined. 4. An allowance is made for rest from fatigue. 5. The quality of the output is prescribed.
When to this is added the fact that the method is taught, and that the reward is ample, fixed, prompt and assured, the attractive features of the task under Scientific Management have been made plain.
TASK IDEA APPLIES TO WORK OF EVERYONE.--Under Scientific Management there is a task for every member of the organization, from the head of the management to the worker at the most rudimentary work. This is too often not known, or not appreciated by the worker, who feels that what is deemed best for him should be good for everyone. The mental attitude will never be right till all understand that the task idea will increase efficiency when applied to any possible kind of work. With the application of the task idea to all, will come added cooeperation.
TASK IDEA APPLIES TO THE WORK OF THE ORGANIZATION.--The work which is to be done by the organization should be considered the task of the organization, and this organization task is studied before individual tasks are set. The methods used in determining this organization task are analysis and synthesis, just as in the case of the individual task.
INDIVIDUAL TASKS ARE ELEMENTS OF ORGANIZATION TASK.--The individual tasks are considered as elements of the organization task. The problem is, to determine the best arrangement of these individual tasks, the best schedule, and routing. The individual task may be thought of as something moving, that must be gotten out of the way.
Management has been called largely a matter of transportation. It may be "transportation" or moving of materials, revolution of parts of fixed machinery, or merely transportation of parts of one's body in manual movements;[7] in any case, the laws governing transportation apply to all. This view of management is most stimulating to the mind. A moving object attracts attention and holds interest. Work that is interesting can be accomplished with greater speed and less fatigue. Thinking in terms of the methods of Scientific Management as the most accurate and efficient in transporting the finished output and its "chips"[8] will be a great aid towards attaining the best results possible by means of a new method of visualizing the problem.
QUALIFICATIONS OF THE SYNTHESIST.--The synthesist must have a constructive mind, for he determines the sequence of events as well as the method of attack. He must have the ability to see the completed whole which he is trying to make, and to regard the elements with which he works not only as units, but in relation to each other. He must feel that any combination is influenced not only by the elements that go into it, but by the inter-relation between these elements. This differs for different combinations as in a kaleidoscope.
THE SYNTHESIST A CONSERVER.--The Synthesist must never be thought of as a destructive critic. He is, in reality, a conserver of all that is valuable in old methods. Through his work and that of the analyst, the valuable elements of traditional methods are incorporated into standard methods. These standard methods will, doubtless, be improved as time goes on, but the valuable elements will be permanently conserved.
SYNTHESIST AN INVENTOR.--The valuable inventions referred to as the result of measurement are the work of the synthetic mind. It discovers new, better methods of doing work, and this results in the invention of better means, such as tools or equipment.
For example,--in the field of Bricklaying, the Non-stooping Scaffold, the Packet and the Fountain Trowel were not invented until the analysis of bricklaying was made, and the synthesis of the chosen elements into standard methods made plain the need and specifications for new equipment.
RELATION OF INVENTION TO SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT IMPORTANT.--There has been much discussion as to the relation of Invention to Scientific Management. It has been claimed by many otherwise able authorities that many results claimed as due to Scientific Management are really the results of new machinery, tools or equipment that have been invented.[9] Scientific Management certainly can lay no claim to credit for efficiency which comes through inventions neither suggested nor determined by it. But the inventions from the results of which Scientific Management is said to have borrowed credit are usually, like the bricklaying inventions cited, not only direct results of Scientific Management, but probably would not have sprung from any other source for years to come.
SYNTHESIST A DISCOVERER OF LAWS.--It is the synthetic type of mind that discovers the laws. For example--it was Dr. Taylor, with the aid of a few of his specially trained co-workers, who discovered the following governing laws:
1. law of no ratio between the foot-pounds of work done and the fatigue caused in different kinds of work. 2. law of percentage of rest for overcoming fatigue. 3. law of classification of work according to percentage of fatigue caused. 4. laws for making high-speed steel. 5. laws relating to cutting metals. 6. laws that will predict the right speed, feed and cut on metals for the greatest output. 7. laws for predicting maximum quantity of output that a man can achieve and thrive. 8. laws for determining the selection of the men best suited for the work.
SYNTHESIST AN ADVISER ON INTRODUCTION OF NEW METHODS.--Having constructed the standard tasks or standard methods which are new, the synthesist must remember to introduce his new task or method with as few new variables as possible. He should so present it that all the old knowledge will come out to meet the new, that all the brain paths that have already been made will be utilized, and that the new path will lead out from paths which are well known and well traveled.
INTRODUCE WITH AS FEW NEW VARIABLES AS POSSIBLE.--The greatest speed in learning a new method will be attained by introducing it with as few new variables as possible.
For example,--learning to dictate to a dictaphone. The writer found it very difficult, at first, to dictate into the dictaphone,-- the whirling of the cylinder distracted the eye, the buzzing of the motor distracted the ear, the rubber tube leading to the mouth-piece was constantly reminding the touch that something new was being attempted. At the suggestion of one well versed in Scientific Management, the mouth-piece of the dictaphone was propped on the desk telephone on a level with the mouth-piece of the latter. The writer then found that as soon as one became interested in the dictating and one's attention was concentrated on the thought, one was able absolutely to forget the new variable, because it is one which is kept constant, and to dictate fluently. The emphasis laid on the likeness in thus dictating to the old accustomed act of talking through the telephone, seemed to put all other differences into the background, and to allow of forming the new and desired habit very quickly.
SUMMARY
EFFECT OF ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS ON THE WORK.--As the outcome of Analysis and Synthesis is Standardization, so the effect of them upon work is standard work. Quantity of output can be predicted, quality of output is assured.
EFFECT ON THE WORKER.--The effect of Analysis and Synthesis upon the worker is to make him feel that the methods which he is using are right, and that, because of this, his work must be of value. The more the worker is induced to cooeperate in the determining and the combination of elements, the more will he share with the investigators the satisfaction in getting permanent results. The outcome of this cooeperation will, again, result in more perfect future results, and so on, progressively.
CHAPTER V FOOTNOTES: ===============================================
1. Compare _Mechanical Analysis_. Taylor and Thompson, _Concrete, Plain and Reinforced_, p. 193. 2. H. LeChatelier, Discussion of Paper 1119, A.S.M.E., p. 303. 3. H.L. Gantt, _Work, Wages and Profits_, p. 35. 4. F.B. Gilbreth, _Cost Reducing System_. 5. F.B. Gilbreth, _Bricklaying System_, p. 151. 6. James M. Dodge, Discussion of Paper 1119, A.S.M.E., para. 284. 7. F.B. Gilbreth, _Motion Study_. 8. James M. Dodge. 9. London, _Engineering_, Sept. 15, 1911.
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