Sam set out to improve the efficiency of the shirt factory, but as we will find in the second half of this unit, the result of his plan did not completely meet his expectations.

Sam ADAMS, industrial engineer

If you ask my mother why I became an industrial management engineer, she will tell you that I have always been like this.

What she means is that I always want to arrange everything in an orderly and neat way. When I was still in primary school, I liked to put my socks in the top left drawer of the wardrobe, my underwear in the top right drawer, my shirt in the middle drawer, and my neatly folded pants in the bottom drawer.

In fact, I have always been an efficiency expert of the whole family. I arranged my father's tools, my mother's kitchen utensils and my sister's boyfriend.

I need to be efficient. I want to be organized. For me, everything has a fixed position, and everything is always in the right position. These qualities have laid a good foundation for my future industrial management.

It's a pity that I'm a bit overbearing, and I'm not very good at listening to other people's opinions. When I tell you my first project after I got my bachelor's degree in university, you will understand what I mean.

After graduation, I returned to my hometown-a small town in Indiana. I had not found a job at that time. A friend of my father's, Mr. Hobbes, owns a small shirt factory in town. In the past five years, the number of workers in this factory has increased from twenty to eighty. Mr. Hobbes was worried that his factory would become too big and inefficient, so he asked me to be a short-term consultant.

I came to the factory and spent a week or so looking around and taking some notes. To tell you the truth, I was surprised by what I saw.

The strangest thing is that the factory has no quality control. No one checks the finished products produced by the factory. Therefore, some shirts packed for shipment lack one or two buttons, collars and sometimes even sleeves.

The production conditions in the factory are very poor. The workbench is very high, so it is uncomfortable for workers to sit next to it. Except for half an hour for lunch, there is no rest time to adjust the boring work all day. There is no music in the factory. The walls in the workshop are all dark gray. To my surprise, the workers didn't strike.

In addition, the production process of the factory is also intermittent. There is a young man sewing buttons on the assembly line who is particularly absent-minded. It was not long before I recognized him. It turned out that he was the "big Jim" who sat behind me in middle school math class. He was so slow that all the shirts were delayed when they arrived at him. The students behind him on the assembly line had to wait there and do nothing; Therefore, when "Big Jim" works and thinks, a lot of time goes by in vain, and the labor efficiency is greatly affected. I've been thinking about why he hasn't been fired all week.

After a week's observation, Mr. Hobbes asked me to give an oral report on the results of the investigation. I summarized the main points and reported to him as follows:

"If quality inspection is carried out, you will greatly improve the quality of finished products."

"If the assembly line is redesigned, the production process will be stable and save time and energy."

"If the height of the workbench is lowered, the machine will be more comfortable to operate."

"If the factory plays pleasant background music to beautify the monotonous environment, the productivity of the factory can be greatly improved."

"If employees have a coffee break of 15 minutes in the morning and afternoon, they will be more efficient."

"If workers can get regular salary increases and promotions because of their excellent work, they will have greater enthusiasm for production."

Mr. Hobbes thanked me for my report and told me that he would discuss my suggestion with his brother, the owner and manager of another factory. "We care about the development of the factory," he said. "We should keep pace with the times."

He also gave me a check for one hundred dollars and a box of shirts.