Thursday 18 February 2021

optimisation of manual labour

Eighteen types of elemental motions to study the economy of movement and exertion in the workplace as with a flow-chart, therblig units are intended as controls for eliminating unneeded steps. Created by industrial psychologists Lillian Moller Gilbreth and Frank Bunker Gilbreth (as near reversals of their surname), they first appeared in a 1915 trade paper article as “the elements of a cycle of decisions and motions” the scheme famously and indelibly suggesting that it be common protocol that a surgeon is handed their implements and that various checklist are put in place. Purposefully, the last step prior to execution is the admonition “to think” (not depicted as a diagrammatic symbol) rather than the first.