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“Degrees of Freedom”: on Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's

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“Degrees of Freedom”: on Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's “Degrees OF FREEDOM”: ON FRANK AND LILLIAN GILBRETH’S Allocation OF Movement ELLIOTT Sturtevant In a paper entitled “Motion Study for the Crippled Sol- dier,” published in 1917, Frank B. and Lillian M. Gilbreth outlined a single graphical method as means of unifying the fields of time and motion study, which—under the novel heading of the “micromotion study”—had recently adopted the use of motion pictures.1 Prior to this method, time study had sought to divide work into precisely timed motions with a stopwatch and duly trained clerk.2 These motions however remained specific to the individual and type of work under study whether they be the operations of a particular cashier or those involved in paper-box making. These analyses, the Gilbreths quickly realized, were of little benefit in synthesizingmethods of least waste—the ulti- mate aim of evaluating and combining individual motions—for these routinely performed tasks.3 The introduction of the “Simultaneous Motion Cycle Chart” offered an alternative: the movements evidenced with the use of motion pictures would be split into a set of universal elementary motions called therbligs.4 A slightly-adjusted rever- 1 For his own account of time study, see Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York; London: Harper & Brother, 1913); and later Steward M. Lowry, Harold B. Maynard and G. J. Stegemerten, Time and Motion Study; and Formulas for Wage Incentives (New York; London: McGraw-Hill, 1927). For the Gilbreths own account of the “micromotion method,” see Frank B. Gilbreth and Lillian M. Gilbreth, Applied Motion Study; A Collection of Papers on the Efficient Method to Industrial Preparedness (New York: MacMillan, 1919). For detailed accounts of the competition and controversy surrounding Taylor and Frank Gilbreth, see Milton J. Nadworny, “Frederick Taylor and Frank Gilbreth: Competition in Scientific Management,” Business History Review 31 (Spring 1957): 23-34; and Brian Price, “Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and the Motion Study Controversy, 1907-1930,” in A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor, ed. Daniel Nelson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992), 58-76. 2 For detailed accounts of the Gilbreths’ use of film and their “mechanical solu- tion to the problems of subjective vision” see, Espelth H. Brown, “Industrial Choreography: Photography and the Standardization of Motion,” in The Corpo- rate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884-1929 (Baltimore; London: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), 65-118; and Scott Curtis, “Images of Efficiency: The Films of Frank B. Gilbreth,” in Films that Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, ed. Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vondereau (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 85-99. 3 As the Gilbreths stated, “There is no waste of any kind in the world that equals the waste from needless, ill-directed, and ineffective motions.” (Gilbreth and Gilbreth, Applied Motion Study, 41-56). 4 Ralph M. Barnes, Industrial Engineering and Management, Problems and Poli- cies, (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1931), 157. 160 Elliott Sturtevant Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00086 by guest on 28 September 2021 Example of two-handed “cycle of motions” required to remove a cap from a mechanical pencil and examine the eraser. Credit: Ralph M. Barnes. 1944, table. From: Work Methods Manual. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1944. 161 “Degrees Of Freedom”: On Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s Allocation of Movement Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00086 by guest on 28 September 2021 Detail of the “Simultaneous Cycle Motion Chart” Credit: Frank B. & Lillian M. Gilbreth. 1919, chart. From: Applied Motion Study. New York: MacMillan, 1919. sal of “Gilbreth,” the therbligs represented the sixteen possible elements of a “cycle of decisions and motions.” All work, the Gil- breths believed, could be represented by the following elements arranged in varying sequences: 1. Search; 2. Find; 3. Select; 4. Grasp; 5. Position; 6. Assemble; 7. Use; 8. Disassemble, or take apart; 9. Inspect; 10. Transport, loaded; 11. Pre-position for next operation; 12. Release load; 13. Transport, empty; 14. Wait (un- avoidable delay); 15. Wait (avoidable delay); 16. Rest (for over- coming fatigue).5 The chart itself was divided vertically by “ana- tomical groups” such as right arm and left arm, and horizontally in increments of time, typically 1/2000 of a minute, a unit which the Gilbreths called a “wink.”6 Each of the “anatomical groups” was further subdivided into subgroups such as upper arm, lower arm, wrist, thumb, first finger, second finger, third finger, fourth finger, and palm; and so on.7 While reviewing the motion pic- tures, the “management engineer” allotted a therblig to each motion performed by an anatomical group or subgroup thereof. As such the therbligs became a sort of “industrial shorthand” for 5 Gilbreth and Gilbreth, Applied Motion Study, 138. A seventeenth therblig, “plan,” was latter added, see Ralph M. Barnes, “Time and Motion Study. The Motion-Picture Camera and Micromotion Study,” in Industrial Management and Engineering (New York; London: McGraw-Hill, 1931), 149-180. 6 Allan Herbert Mogensen, Common Sense Applied to Motion and Time Study, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1932), 87. 7 Gilbreth and Gilbreth, Applied Motion Study, 138-139. 162 Elliott Sturtevant Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00086 by guest on 28 September 2021 analyzing the elementary motions of any particular operation.8 Much has been written about scien- tific management as the systematic stan- dardization of work, and more specifically the rationalizing—making efficient—of industrial production.9 Many of these stud- ies further focus on management’s nascent professionalization and its relations to labor.10 Others have offered accounts of the effacement of the individual worker as a result of scientific management’s relent- less technocratic control.11 Others still, have attempted to nuance such conceits of power by recovering subjectivity from within the managerial project.12 But what of the understandings of subjects, systems 8 Mogensen, Common Sense Applied to Motion and Time Study, 104. 9 For seminal volumes in an overwhelming body of work, see Samuel Haber, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1980-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); and Martha Banta, Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen and Ford (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). 10 See Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: Ori- gins of the Twentieth-Century Factory System in the United States, 1880-1920, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 46-51; idem, “Scientific Management, Systematic Manage- ment, and Labor, 1880-1915” The Business History Review, Vol, 48, No. 4 (Winter, 1974): 479-500. 11 See Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain: the Trans- formation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Cen- tury (New York: Basic Books, 1979); David Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Knopf, 1977); and more recently Sharon Corwin, “Pictur- ing Efficiency: Precionism, Scientific Management, and the Effacement of Labor,” Representations 84 (2003): 139-65; and Jennifer Karns Alexander, The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008). 12 See for instance Caitjan Gainty, “’Going After the High-Brows’: Frank Gilbreth and the Surgical Subject, 1912-1917,” Representations 118, no. 1 (2012): 1-27; Richard Lindstrom, “’They All Believe They Are Undiscovered Mary Pickfords’: Work- Example of the “Simultaneous Cycle Motion ers, Photography, and Scientific Management,” Chart” included in the paper. Credit: Frank B. & Technology and Culture, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct., 2000): Lillian M. Gilbreth. 1919, chart. From: Applied Mo- 725-751; as well as Brown, The Corporate Eye; and tion Study. New York: MacMillan, 1919. Curtis, “Images of Efficiency.” 163 “Degrees Of Freedom”: On Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s Allocation of Movement Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00086 by guest on 28 September 2021 and forces made visible by the simultaneous motion cycle chart? How can the chart be understood as describing forms of hu- man subjectivity? By analyzing the worker through his or her metrically defined motions—simultaneously called upon by the “surroundings”—scientific management ultimately sought to understand work as mere movement; a fluid transaction of mo- tion between the workers and the tools, equipment, machines and environments that surround them. The Gilbreths’ “quest for the one best way” relied on their proposal for an organizational scheme premised on the division of work by “function” rather than by “men”.13 As the Gilbreths wrote, “because the division is by men,” under “traditional” or “military” management, “it is almost impossible to measure and standardize the duties of the positions.”14 Such an arrange- ment had traditionally sought out the most able-bodied men and had employed a strictly hierarchical understanding of authority. Character evaluation as performed by the growing field of in- dustrial psychology had likewise been enlisted by large corpora- tions seeking to select the best employees.15 As an alternative the Gilbreths proposed “functional” or “scientific management,”
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