Factory Organization and Management Book

AND MANAGEMENT BY N. F. T. SAUNDERS, B. Sc. MEMBER OF THE I. E. E. LONDON SIR ISAAC PITMAN SONS, LTD. 1945 INTRODUCTION THE management of a factory can be one of the most fascinating occupations. It provides ample scope for the whole variety of human characteristics and yields rewards for skill and perseverance not easily to be reaped ekewhere. There is a satisfaction to be experi enced in creating something tangible, useful, and attractive from the most ordinary raw mateflals a mental exhilaration accompanying the technical development f a most complex and astonishing device starting from a blank sheet of paper and a thrill in seeing in movement a machine which has lived for months only in the minds of its builders. And in these days, when it is realized that utility and ugliness are not the Siamese twins of industrialism, the production of an article of beauty gives a sense of fulfilment to the artistic feeling present to some extent in all human beings. No general launching a campaign is to be envied by a man embarking on the production of a new article. A scientist finding at last the new material of perhaps arresting beauty, though derived from coal tar and sawdust, has no more reason to feel satisfied than the manufacturer who picks up that material, has its properties tabu lated, and its potentialities analysed, and then creates from it an article attractive, ingenious, and useful. In the factory itself apart from what it produces there is again endless scope for genius. The welding together of a collection of human beings, each with his or her own ideas, ambitions, and characteristics, into an efficient, happy team is a never-ending task. The scheming of shop layouts to carve human effort down to the irreducible minimum the analysis of human motions to adapt them to tasks undreamt of the organizing of groups of unskilled people to produce at an incredible rate something completely beyond the capabilities of the master craftsman of a few years ago the tooling to ensure perfection of performance and the maintenance of standards of quality and the innumerable other activities essential to success ful manufacture, provide all the opportunity that any man could ask to express the utmost of which he is capable. The financial side also has its fascination. In some circles the average manufacturer is fondly pictured as a sort of super slave driver wallowing in enormous profits, but anyone with experience in running a factory knows how wide of the mark this is. On the one hand competition holds down selling prices while, on the other, VI INTRODUCTION the proper materials and the generous treatment of workers, without which no factory can build up a secure position, cost a great deal of money. It is no easy task to control the expenditure of thousands of pounds spent in manufacture to within a few per cent on the right side of income. In fact, this can be done only by sheer efficiency in organization since, under modern conditions, the only loophole for profit-making is in the avoidance of waste of materials and human effort. In this book an attempt has been made to outline the funda mental principles of factory organization in readable language, with economy in paper and therefore in the readers time. Where a problem has been dealt with in some detail, it is because it is of particular importance or because it has been neglected in existing books on the subject. Inevitably there are generalizations or state ments which are given almost axiomatic force but, as the Author himself says, the man who maintains at any rate in a factory that there is only one way to do a thing is always wrong. Where, therefore, precise examples of systems are given, it must not be assumed that these are recommended as being preferable or even suitable for any particular factory, but rather as illustrations to show the various factors which any system should take into account. CONTENTS CHAP. PACK INTRODUCTION ....... V I. FUNDAMENTAL POLICY ........Read More