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MACHINE  OPERATORS
The  third  large  division  in  the  manufacturing  process  in
addition  to  inspection  and  assembling  is  the  operation  of
production  machines.  Finding  operators  for  these  machines ­
  offers  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  all  employment
problems.  The  turnover  among  such  operators  is  unusually ­
  large  for  a  variety  of  reasons,  most  prominent  among
which  is  the  monotony  and  strain  of  the  work.  To  sit
day  after  day  watching  or  feeding  a  machine  which  does
the  same  operation  over  and  over  again  in  an  endless
chain  is  indeed  work  which  requires  ability  and  temperament ­
  of  a  peculiar  kind.
However,  the  problem  is  not  merely  one  of  finding  individuals ­
  who  can  stand  the  strain;  it  is  also  one  of  selecting ­
  workers  who  can  obtain  the  maximum  output
from  the  machines  at  which  they  are  stationed.  It  is  the
general  practice  of  production  engineers  to  make  a  very
generous  allowance  for  the  inefficiency  of  a  machine;  but
as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  allowance  should  frequently  be
charged  against  the  operator.  For  the  inefficiency  of  a
machine  is  in  a  large  part  determined  by  the  ability  of  the
operator.  A  slow  or  a  poor  operator  means  an  inefficient
machine,  at  least  in  the  case  of  machines  which  are  semiautomatic ­
  or  entirely  fed  by  hand.  The  writer  has  observed ­
  hundreds  of  hand-fed  machines  which  were  only
fifty  or  seventy  per  cent  efficient  because  the  operators
could  not  feed  them  fast  enough.  On  the  other  hand,  many
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