Basic Concepts: A Better Method by Questioning the Present One
Job Methods rests on a single idea — a better way of doing a job is found by questioning the present way. The radio-shield demonstration shows it: the same job done two ways, with the product unchanged.
A better method is found by questioning the present one, not by inventing a new product. This section teaches that idea the way the original course did — by watching one job done two ways. A worker named Bill Brown ran a job making radio shields. We see his present method first, full of walking, laying out, stacking, carrying, and weighing; then the proposed method his foreman and an operator developed once they questioned every detail. The product stays the same. Only the method changes.
By the end of this section, you should understand:
- that a better method is found by questioning the present one, not by inventing a new product,
- the present-method-versus-proposed-method demonstration of the radio-shield job,
- the three types of work every job is some mix of — material handling, machine work, and hand work,
- why "my job is different" is not a reason to skip the method,
- and that the results came from eliminating waste and making the necessary work easier and safer, not from speeding anyone up.
1A better method comes from questioning the present one
Most jobs are done the way they have always been done. The arrangement of the bench, the order of the work, where the supply sits — these were settled long ago, often by accident, and then left alone. Job Methods starts from the belief that almost any job can be done better, and that the way to find the better method is not to stare at the present one and hope for inspiration. It is to question the present method, detail by detail, until the waste in it becomes visible.
A better method is found by questioning the present method, not by inventing a new product. The job stays the same; the way of doing it changes.
The best way to see this is to watch a real job done two ways. The demonstration that follows uses an actual job from another plant. Watch it for the method, not the product. The exact part does not matter — what matters is the kind of waste it shows, because that same waste hides in jobs of every kind.
2The demonstration job: making radio shields
The demonstration job makes a radio shield. A copper sheet and a brass sheet are inspected, assembled, riveted together, stamped, and packed. Four operators work at four benches. There is a supply area for the sheets, scrap bins, and tote boxes for moving the finished work. (In the classroom the metal sheets are paper, and a stapler stands in for the riveting machine, but the motions are the real ones.)
The job is worth studying because it contains all three of the basic types of work, and almost every production job is some mix of them.
Moving things from place to place — walking to a supply box, carrying a tote box, delivering cases.
What a machine does to the part — here, riveting the copper and brass sheets together.
What a person does by hand — laying out, lining up, inspecting, and stamping the shields.
Every production job is some mix of material handling, machine work, and hand work. The radio-shield job contains all three, which is why it stands in for almost any job.
What to notice: the demonstration is built around these three kinds of work on purpose. If your job involves any of them — and nearly every job involves at least one — the method applies to it.
This is the point to settle before going further. Do not let anyone decide the method does not apply because their job is different. It is the method for improvement we are studying, not the radio shield.
3The present method
In the present method, Bill Brown does the job like this. He walks back to a supply box six feet behind the bench, picks up fifteen or twenty copper sheets, carries them to the bench, inspects and lays out twelve, and walks back to return the extras. He does the same again for the brass sheets — walk, pick up, carry, inspect, lay out, walk back. He stacks the twelve sets crisscross beside the riveter. He rivets each set, then stamps each shield and piles the shields on the table.
Then the moving begins. The finished shields go into a tote box that, full, weighs about seventy-five pounds. The box is carried fifty feet to a scale, weighed, and a ticket is made out. A material handler then takes it a hundred feet to a separate packing department, where a packer unloads the box, counts two hundred shields into a case, then closes, stencils, and weighs the case. Empty tote boxes are carried back.
Watch how much of this is not the shield at all. The walking to the supply box, the laying out, the stacking, the carrying of a heavy box to a scale, the weighing, the second handling in another department — none of it adds anything to the radio shield. It is motion around the work, not the work itself.
Run the present method at a good, honest pace — not slow, not rushed. The waste should be obvious even when the operator is working hard. That is the point: the problem is the method, not the effort.
4The proposed method
After the foreman and one of the operators questioned every detail of the present method, they developed a better one. The product did not change. The method did.
In the proposed method the supply is delivered right onto the bench, so the walking to the supply box is gone. Jigs — movable holding devices — hold the sheets so both hands are free to pick them up and inspect them. A fixture positions two riveters together, with guides to line up the sheets, so both hands can rivet and the separate laying-out and stacking disappear. Slots are cut in the bench with scrap boxes underneath, so scrap drops away instead of being handled. The fixture is built so that a stack of twenty finished shields sits flush with the bench top, and cases are pre-positioned within easy reach so the shields are packed into the case right there at the bench. The handler brings the empty cases and takes the full ones to packing; there is no heavy tote box, no walk to a scale, no weighing, no second handling in another department.
| The radio-shield job | Present method | Proposed method |
|---|---|---|
| Supply location | Boxes six feet behind the bench; operator walks back and forth to fetch and return sheets. | Supply delivered right onto the bench by the handler — no walking. |
| Inspect & lay out | Pick up 15–20 sheets, inspect, lay out 12 by hand, return the extras — for copper and again for brass. | Sheets held in jigs; pick up and inspect with both hands; no separate laying out. |
| Holding the work | One hand holds and lines up the sheets while the other works. | Jigs hold the sheets and a fixture positions two riveters, with guides to line them up — both hands work. |
| Riveting | Sets stacked crisscross beside the riveter, then riveted one at a time. | Two riveters positioned by the fixture; both hands rivet — no stacking. |
| Scrap | Handled separately into scrap bins. | Slots cut in the bench drop scrap into boxes underneath. |
| Packing | 75 lb tote box carried 50 ft to a scale, weighed, then 100 ft to a separate packing department and handled again. | Cases pre-positioned at the bench; shields packed right there; handler moves full cases — no carrying, weighing, or second handling. |
The same radio-shield job done two ways. The proposed method removes the walking, the separate laying out and stacking, the heavy carrying and weighing, and the second handling — and uses jigs, a riveting fixture, and scrap slots so the necessary work is easier and safer.
What to notice: nothing on the proposed side is faster hands. The supply moved closer, holding devices replaced one hand doing the holding, and two operations were combined at the bench. The work got easier, not quicker.
Jig — a movable mechanical holding device. Fixture — a fixed mechanical holding device, usually used with a machine. Both let the operator stop using a hand to hold the work, so both hands can do useful work.
5The results
Before giving the numbers, it is worth asking people to guess the improvement. The figures surprise them — and they should know where the gains came from.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Output per operator | About three times as many shields per day. |
| Output per machine | Each riveting machine produced about 50% more shields per day. |
| Scrap | Cut from 15% to 2% right away, with further gains identified. |
The improvement, in the actual case. Each operator made about three times as many shields; each riveting machine produced about half again as many; scrap fell from fifteen percent to two percent.
What to notice: every one of these gains came from changing the method — not from anyone working harder. The operator on the proposed method did not hurry and did not have to.
Be clear about where the results came from. Production went up because the unnecessary parts of the job were eliminated and the necessary parts were made easier and safer to do. No worker had to speed up. Doing a job in a hurry tends to produce bad work, which is the opposite of the goal. If anything, less experienced operators ran the proposed method and made fewer mistakes, because the jigs and the fixture did the holding and lining up that used to depend on skill.
Treating an output number as proof that people were pushed harder. The radio-shield gains are the result of removing waste from the method. A "speed-up" is not a Job Methods improvement at all — it is the thing Job Methods exists to avoid.
And this was an ordinary job, picked to teach the method. Hundreds of other jobs in the same plant were improved the same way. The improvement is repeatable because the method is repeatable.
Section summary
A better method is found by questioning the present one. The radio-shield demonstration shows it plainly: the present method is full of walking to the supply box, inspecting and laying out sheets, stacking sets, carrying a heavy tote box to a scale, weighing it, and handling it again in another department — motion around the work that adds nothing to the shield. The proposed method delivers the supply to the bench, uses jigs to hold the sheets and a fixture to position two riveters, cuts scrap slots in the bench, and packs cases right at the bench. The product never changed; only the method did.
Every job is some mix of three types of work — material handling, machine work, and hand work — which is why "my job is different" is no excuse: the method fits any job built from those. And the results — about three times as many shields per operator, half again as many per machine, and scrap cut from fifteen percent to two percent — came from eliminating waste and making the necessary work easier and safer, not from speeding anyone up. The next section presents the four-step method that produced this improvement.