(SHORT
NOTES FROM TEAM MANAGEMENT:
Historical
Management Theories at http://www.mindtools.com)
Efficiency and productivity go together. Working efficiently has many meanings. It's about working in a way that allows you to
get the most done in a fixed period of time. It also involves making sure that you don't
hurt productivity.
Working too fast will risk making
mistakes. There is also the risk of becoming
so tired, either mentally or physically, that work have to stop too early,
which will affect the total efficiency.
The poorly-designed, inefficient
workplaces of the late 19th century led to the scientific management movement
in the early 20th century, which applied the scientific method to the study of
the workplace. Frank Gilbreth and his
wife, Lillian, were supporters of this movement. The Gilbreths pioneered the
study of "time and motion" at work. They were interested in
efficiency, so they set up experiments to examine the movements that individual
workers made while doing their daily work.
Before he became a workplace researcher,
Frank was a bricklayer. He noted that
every worker had his own way of laying bricks. By observing these individual methods, he
determined the most efficient way to complete the task. Frank believed that by working efficiently,
both the employer and the worker would benefit – employers would gain more
productivity, and workers would have reduced stress and fatigue. His observations eventually led to a new way
of laying bricks that more than doubled daily output.
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