TIME AND MOTION STUDY COMES TO BANK ROBBERY. Shortly after I referred in this post to the time and motion studies of the Gilbreths, I came across another example of time and motion study which comes from the period around 1920, a time when the Gilbreths were developing their work. I found the example in a book Annalisa lent me, THE TALENT CODE by Daniel Coyle, about the processes of teaching and learning, full of wonderful examples such as the following:
While in jail in 1917, a man named Herman Lamm developed a system for robbing banks. Doyle calls Lamm “the originator and teacher of modern bank-robbing skill”. The system included specialization and precise timing. The specialists included “lookout, lobby man, vault man, driver”. Weeks were spent casing the bank and rehearsing movements. There was a strict time limit—at the end of the allotted time, the gang would leave, no matter how far along they were on the robbery plan.