Frank Bunker Gilbreth was born in 1868. He began making observations about movements at the age of 27, while working as superintendent at a construction company.
Lillian Molle was born in 1878 and married Frank in 1904. She dedicated herself to psychology, helping her husband in studies on fatigue.
Gilberth devised a statistical study of movements based on human anatomy and physiology on the effects of fatigue on worker productivity. Based on this study he found that fatigue had effects such as decreased productivity and quality of work, loss of time, increased staff turnover, illness, accidents, and decreased exercise capacity.
The Gilbreth couple studied the moves to reduce the number of actions while performing a task in order to increase productivity. He sought to understand the work habits of employees in industries and techniques were developed to avoid wasting time and movement.
Gilbreth made a bricklayer's job easier and faster. By carefully examining the mason's work, Gilbreth reduced the number of movements to seat a brick from 18 to 5, reducing fatigue and increasing productivity. The "therbligs" (Gilbreth on the contrary, with a small change) were developed, a classification scheme that showed 18 basic movements of the hands.
Also to minimize the fatigue proposed the redesign of the working environment, the reduction of the daily hours of work and the implantation or increase of days of paid rest.
Frank invented devices such as mobile scaffolding, concrete mixers, conveyor belts, reinforcing bars, all with the aim of avoiding wasted movement.
Efficiency and minimization of movement were examples of what Gilbreth pursued. The study of movements is often misunderstood and applied in an erroneously limited sense. Study does not only require the analysis of the operator's movements, but also with the same importance, the analysis of the entire work environment.
We can affirm that the objectivity of the studies of the times and movements provided:
1. Elimination of wasted human effort.
2. Adaptation of the workers to the task itself.
3. Training of workers to better adapt to their work.
4. Greater specialization of activities.
5. Establishment of detailed norms of execution of the work. Manual labor can be reduced to elementary movements.
The principles of saving movements were classified into three groups:
1. Use of the human body, Avoid useless movements in the execution of a task, seeking improvement and methods to decrease muscle effort.
2. Material arrangement of the workplace, seeking to perform, from the physiological point of view, the necessary movements and also seeking to carefully select the workers for all functions.
3. Performance of the tools / equipment, causing a synchrony where the movements should have an appropriate rhythm and also permanently train the workers in their jobs.
The measure of power developed by muscles is not currently applied, although Franck has been deeply concerned with the effects of fatigue on the job. This is because today we try to make the most of the highest human capacity, independent of their intelligence. Fatigue is intangible, varying from individual to individual, having its origin in the effort provided at the time of work. Thus, after being admitted to occurrence and its effects, time study technicians established tolerance coefficients for work fatigue in the determination of the standard time, through studies conducted in laboratories, we have tried to demonstrate the behavior of the individual's income.
In some industrialized countries, considering Japan as a highlight, companies adopt collective gymnastics, prior to work, as a form of muscle heating, and this procedure is used to accelerate the initial income of the worker.
Rest is globally recognized as the only means capable of eliminating fatigue. Rest, one should not only understand the weekly and the daily, but also all interruptions of work, regardless of their nature. The analyst must always be aware of practicality.
It is proved that one should introduce according to the nature of the work, small intervals for rest. These intervals tend to stabilize the daily rhythm of production, moving away from the most critical point of fatigue or exhaustion, as a result there will be a significant increase in labor production, fewer accidents and more disposition and pro activity.
There are industries and large companies that allow collective rest, where there is excess physical effort. However, regardless of the method used to establish the intercalated rest interval, we must, above all, understand the importance and necessity of rest.
Recognized and admitted its importance is important to introduce it in the determination of the standard time through coefficients. Therefore, it is agreed, tables, diagrams, etc., which allows a measurement of physical effort and physical rest, although I have already said that measurement of fatigue is practically impossible, varying and depending on the common sense of each leader, but not may fail to consider parameters that lead to the determination of such coefficients, where to adopt them or not is an individual question. But to accept them is to recognize their validity, making the work more humane and more pleasurable to execute.
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