Engineering Planning for Manufacture

T HE essence of the successful operation of any industrial establishment is contained in the maxim "Plan your work--then work your plan." The first part of this maxim is by far the most important since the ability to work any plan depends fundamentally upon the excellence of the plan itself. Farsighted planning, as applied to elementary factory operations, is a relatively simple problem. For example, the problem involved in planning the work of a foundry is to a great extent merely the the duplication of plans already standardized, but in a plant manufacturing widely diversified products, such as we have at Hawthorne, planning becomes at once more difficult and essential. The General Manufacturing Department of the Western Electric Company provides the Bell System with telephone equipment which involves the production of over 13,000 separate and distinct forms of apparatus, in the construction of which there are used over 110,000 different kinds of parts made from 18,000 different kinds, sizes," and shapes of raw material. A number of these parts are produced in very small quantities. The production of the varied product mentioned above involves not only all the usual wood and metal working operations, but also such lines of manufacture as: glass making, textile dyeing, manufacture of porcelain, electrolytic iron, vulcanized and phenolized fibre, 1 Paper read before the Bell System Educational Conference, Chicago, June 22-27, 1925.