shovel

Given the central importance and cost of manual labour in industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the [applied] "science of shoveling" was something of great interest to developers of scientific management such as Frederick Winslow Taylor.[2] Taylor, with his focus on time and motion study, took an interest in differentiating the many motions of manual labor to a far greater degree than others tended to. Managers might not care to analyze it (figuring that brute work is brute work, case closed), and workers might not care to analyze it in any way that encouraged management to take away the prerogative in craft work for the craftsman to decide the details of his methods. Taylor realized that failing to analyze shoveling practice represented a missed opportunity to discover or synthesize best practices for shoveling, which could achieve highest productivity (value for dollar spent). It was Taylor and colleagues in the 1890s through 1910s that greatly expanded the existing idea of varied shovel designs with different-sized scoops, one for each material, based on the material's density. Under scientific management, it was no longer acceptable to use the same shovel for shoveling brown coal one day and gravel the next. Taylor advocated the higher capital cost of maintaining two shovels as more than paying for itself through the increase in worker productivity that it would lead to, which would mean less money being spent on wages for each unit of shoveling work accompl