In ancient times, craftsmen led apprentices, and it was often necessary for apprentices to master all the production skills of a product.

Because there is no scientific understanding, a large part of these techniques are useless superstitions.

For example, when ancient craftsmen quenched, they used "the drowning of five animals mixed with the fat of five animals" as the quenching liquid, is this reasonable? Yes, in fact, it is a two-liquid quenching method, the upper layer is oil, the lower layer is water, the metal hardness obtained by the pure oil quenching method is higher, and it is less likely to crack than the pure water quenching method, and the animal urine contains salt, which is also helpful for quenching.

However, the ancients did not understand the principle, so they added many unnecessary superstitious ingredients to this two-liquid quenching method, such as five animals, such as urine, which is actually completely unnecessary.

These useless superstitious ingredients exponentially expand the amount of information about the inheritance of technology.

Coupled with the traditional idea of "teaching apprentices and starving masters", the efficiency of masters and apprentices in this era can be imagined.

The skills that Chen Xian taught to his apprentices did not have any superfluous ingredients, and they were much more streamlined than traditional craftsmen, and he also divided these streamlined knowledge into four processes, and the amount of information in each process became less, which made Chen Xian's apprentices not only learn faster than others, but also easier to improve their technical proficiency.

Therefore, Chen Xian was able to teach qualified craftsmen that others could not train in two or three years in just three months.

The advantages of division of labor and cooperation are not only in the amount of learning and proficiency.

Another advantage of the division of labor is the preparation time.

A farmer chops firewood and carries water in the morning, and in the afternoon he goes to the mountains to cut firewood for tomorrow, and then returns to plough the fields.

In fact, if you look closely, this farmer probably doesn't even spend a fifth of his time chopping wood, carrying water, chopping wood, plowing the land, and most of his time is wasted on the road and preparation.

A person, if he needs to complete many different jobs in one day, then in the interval between work changes, he will unconsciously waste a lot of time, he will sit down to smoke a pot after chopping wood, chat with people after picking up water, and go to a string after chopping wood, in short, the change of work will make people relax and waste a lot of time unconsciously.

People with factory work experience have such experience, let you only produce one product, you may be able to produce thousands of pieces a day, but if you are asked to produce ten products at the same time, maybe you can only produce two hundred pieces a day, most of your time will be wasted on borrowing drawings, installing mold fixtures, complaining, and slipping numbers.

Therefore, the division of labor and cooperation can make workers more focused on a single labor, so as to greatly improve efficiency.

Chen Xian's subconscious division of labor and cooperation arrangement is the main reason for the amazing efficiency of his workshop.

The second reason is "standardized production".

In fact, standardized production is also an extension of the division of labor and cooperation.

Only the division of labor and cooperation can achieve standardized production.

When Chen Xian first entered the factory, he had done process work for a period of time.

Therefore, when he arranged the production of apprentices, he habitually formulated process cards for each process.

For example, in the process card of the preparation group, he strictly stipulates the time when the iron is calcined in the fire when folding and forging, when the iron is taken out of the furnace and folded and forged, the forging time, and the number of forging times during this time.

In order to control the time, Chen Xian initially arranged that each group must have a special person to time according to the breath, but he soon found that this was not only labor-intensive, but also very inaccurate.

After some experiments, Chen Xian made a batch of simple hourglasses, the hourglass is made of wood, installed on a wooden box, the sand leaking from the hourglass falls into the wooden box, when the different processes are carried out in time, the workers use special wooden spoons of different sizes, scoop a spoonful of sand that has been screened, cleaned, and copied into the hourglass to control the time.

When making hourglasses, it is repeatedly adjusted to ensure that the sand leakage speed of each hourglass is consistent, so that different sizes of spoons can represent different times.

Hourglass timing is far more accurate and controllable than manual timing.

This kind of detailed and repeatable operating procedures allows apprentices not to spend a lot of time exploring and summarizing their own experience, what he has to do is to strictly follow the operating procedures to implement, and he can get better results.

It was these strict operating procedures that allowed inexperienced apprentices to produce qualified katanas very quickly.

In addition to the above two main reasons, the improvement of tools also plays a role.

As a modern person, Chen Xian will naturally think of improving tools, instead of guarding the things of his ancestors like the craftsmen of this era, lest he not learn in place, and other idlers will not be able to think of improving tools at all.

In addition to the initial improvement of the anvil, Chen Xian made some improvements to the chisel, file and other tools.

He used 100 steels and smoldering solids carburizing to create harder and sharper chisels, and improved the production process of files with improved chisels.

The production of files is actually quite simple.

Files are generally produced with high-carbon steel, annealed after forming, chopped with a special chisel after annealing, and finally carburized and quenched.

Of course, it is easy to say, if you really want to produce, it is not a problem to subdivide dozens of processes.

Chen Xian uses pig iron and steel as the raw material for the production of files, after annealing, chopping teeth with improved chisels, after chopping teeth, the file and toner and limestone powder 9:1 mixed powder together sealed in a crockpot for a long time of smoldering, surface carburizing, and finally double-liquid quenching, the quality of the file produced is excellent, and even close to modern industrial products, greatly improving the work efficiency of the shaping group.

In addition to these technical advantages, Chen Xian also has cross-era advantages in management.

In management, Chen Xian habitually formulated a relatively strict system according to the experience he learned in the enterprise.

In terms of production management, Chen Xian adopted a simple documentary system after the most basic literacy education for the apprentices, so that each finished knife can be easily traced back to which person prepared his materials, which person forged them, which person carried out the rough grinding, and which person carried out the fine grinding.

For each knife, after Chen Xian personally conducted the final test knife, he would give a quality score to the product, and according to the score, he would give a bonus to the producer of the knife.

Of course, if it's scrap, then everyone has no bonus and is in vain.

This system not only greatly stimulates the apprentices' enthusiasm for labor, but also stimulates the apprentices' enthusiasm for learning.

In the production process, there is often a certain person to prepare the iron material, the forging group rushes to ask, a certain person to prepare the material, the forging group is reluctant to use, this situation greatly stimulates the apprentices' desire to learn and explore.

In his opinion, these management methods are the most basic things, and there is nothing to be proud of and show off, but he doesn't know that this kind of most basic management is already beyond the times in this era.

It is these things that are ahead of the times that make Chen Xian's blacksmith shop unconsciously make achievements that confuse people in this era.