Armed with a degree in organizational psychology, I started my career in operational improvement during the early 1970s with a nationally recognized Hartford, Connecticut-based insurance company. As part of the company's productivity services team, my job was to conduct stopwatch time studies in the company's business operations in support of an organizationwide—and very successful—productivity improvement program.

During the next 20 years, the techniques of work measurement in administrative environments (e.g., banks, insurance companies) improved in accuracy and speed of application, although the employee work-measurement performance data were frequently misused by management. The light W. Edwards Deming and his 14 points shed on this issue, and the resulting shift in management focus from productivity to quality and customer satisfaction, caused office work-measurement programs to dwindle. By the end of the 1980s, they were virtually dead.

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