Time and Motion Study Volume 10 Issue 5

WHEN delivering his Elbourne lecture Sir Geoffrey Vickers related the following incident. ‘As a very inexperienced subaltern in the old war, my company commander once said to me: “Vickers, the company will bathe this afternoon. Arrange.” In the Flemish hamlet where we were billeted the only bath of any kind was in the local nunnery. The nuns were charity itself but I couldn't ask them to bathe a hundred men. I reviewed other fluid‐containing objects which might be potential baths—cattle drinking troughs, empty beer barrels—and found practical or ethical objections to them all. At that point I had the misfortune to meet my company commander again and was forced to confess that I had not yet solved my problem. He was annoyed. “Whatever have you been doing all this time?” he said. Then, turning his own mind to the problem, apparently for the first time, he added: “Take the company limbers off their wheels, put the tilts inside and the cookers beside them for the hot water; four baths each four feet square, four men to a bath, do the whole job in an hour. Why don't you use your brains?”’