enormous price. He has good dry kilns and here is where you are killing his reputation. I do not blame you as much for this trouble as the men under whom you worked. It seems very strange to me that you could hold a position for twenty-five years and that no one has ever corrected your methods before this. Why, my good man, you would put this concern out of business within just a few months. Would you buy a table with poor glue joints for your own home? I thought not. You and I are going to get along swimmingly and I am going to put all the time I possibly can in this department until we eliminate this joint trouble."

Success is in Knowing How

I talked right from the shoulder to this fellow who, by the way, was twice my size, but I realized the kind of man I was up against. Whether I convinced him that he was wrong I am unable to say. He, however, respected me. Our joint trouble was eliminated and we became pretty good friends.

The success of the furniture manufacturing business is to know "How" to manufacture goods at the same low cost as your keenest competitor. I read a very interesting article in System, the master word "How" in business. The author says: "For every five men who have succeeded, ninety-five have failed. And in most cases the success is trifling compared with what it might be. That's because the principle of study and adaptation of right methods has not been carried far enough. Because every function and operation in each business has not been confronted with an imperative 'How?' and the right answer found."

There are many furniture factories in this country today who do not know "how" to solve their veneer, glue room and cabinet problems. You will find factories being equipped with the very latest wood working machines. They engage first class men to operate them and produce their machine work at the lowest cost possible. Visit the other departments, however, and you will find them very inefficient, indeed.

A few months ago I was told that a certain factory is supposed to be the most thoroughly efficient factory in this country. I became interested and decided to visit this plant. I found their method of handling lumber ideal, the machine and finishing rooms 100% efficient, their system of receiving and shipping beyond criticism, but the cabinet and veneering departments very inefficient.

Why Do Not People Think?

Why is it that some furniture manufacturers will not use a little thought? The manufacturer of wood working machinery produces machines which will greatly reduce the cost of machine work; all the furniture manufacturer need therefore do is to buy and install the machine. But this is not possible in the gluing, veneering and cabinet depart

ments.

Many of your factories employ cheap help in the veneer rooms. Many of you carry the idea "veneered work is a sort of imitation of the real thing and we must hold down the labor cost by paying a low scale of wages in this department." Indeed, I have met foreigners in these departments who could not talk a word of English. They were placed there because they would work for $9 or possibly $10 per week. Some manufacturers to this very day will tell you that veneered work is cheap. When the veneer raises, blisters or checks and the furniture is returned to the manufacturer, those in authority fail to grasp the situation. They may possibly discharge the man doing this work, but in most cases they will engage someone else who is no better qualified than his predecessor. One will at times find the veneer department located in the basement or (as the superintendent chooses to term it) "out of the way place". Imagine what results can be

obtained under such conditions. Again, one will find departments where veneering is done with windows open or where several electric fans are employed. We know or should know, what chilled glue will do to veneered stock and how beautifully the glue becomes chilled in plants of this kind. The manufacturer of veneers employs a re-drier and drys bone dry, loads it in dry cars and after the furniture manufacturer gets it, in many cases the stock will be piled on the cellar floor. Is there any wonder that veneer will check and split?

We know that veneered work has some advantages over solid stock. Hence, why should we not exercise great care in having this laid correctly and eliminate all possible trouble?

Every furniture manufacturer knows that all woods are subject to heat and cold, humidity and lack of humidity, which causes contraction and expansion. All solid woods have a tendency to take up moisture, then dry out again, eventually causing glue joints to open, dowels to come When using built-up loose,, the mortise to shrink, etc. veneered stock you eliminate all this trouble, do you not? This being the case, why should the veneer room not be just as important to the success of your business as the machine department?

The Temperature Must Be Right

Another fault I have found in some of the veneer departments (especially those of small furniture factories) is the temperature of the veneer room. Your finishing foreman will tell you that he must have an even temperature day and night, especially in his varnish rooms, if good work is expected. This applies also to the veneer room, although I do not claim it as important in this room as in the finishing department. Try to hold an even temperature. Many superintendents have preferred charges to the boss against the finishing foreman, claiming that the finisher is to blame for checks and scales in the veneered goods after the finisher gets the pieces. An investigation will, however, reveal that your trouble originated in the veneer room.

Strange as it may seem to many of you readers, there are concerns in business today who use the old time carpetcovered glue spreaders. We also find some concerns which have never adopted glue spreaders, but spread their glue with a brush. If the manufacturer employing the carpet roll and the man doing the spreading by means of a brush could, or would, figure the waste in glue resulting from these methods, they would soon change to the modern way of spreading glue. Exactly the right amount of spread in glue work is a thing of vital importance. Too much glue runs the cost of glue work up at a surprising rate and to have not enough is still more costly, for the veneer will peel. When buying a glue spreader have an expert visit your factory, show him the kind of work you are doing and he will know whether you require rolls of light, fine, or heavy and coarse corrugations, as the occasion may require for the steady spreading of just the right amount of glue.

Veneer Room Presses

Veneer room presses should be taken into consideration. There may be a few veneer press salesmen who will "knock" the hand presses. The hand press is absolutely necessary in many furniture factories where irregular shaped pieces are veneered. For flat surfaces, however, the power or hydraulic presses save considerable time. The selection of your presses, however, should be based entirely on adaptability of service required. The use of hand presses is unsatisfactory on flat work for the reason that it requires too much time to apply the pressure, and they may produce crooked work. It is surprising to find the number of furniture factories doing considerable flat work which will not install more modern presses. No matter what press you employ, be sure you do not remove the stock until

W

ITH each exponent of scientific management trying to impress the manufacturer with some important detail of the shop or in the handling of men or materials, it seems that as yet but very few men have tried to express the real and general principles of management. In fact, in instances it has been neglected.

most

the head or heads of a concern are well fitted for their duties and where their policies are correct it is safe to say that the majority of them can be placed in the unsystematized type of management. As Lee Galloway says, "The

prevalence of this type of management in America has been due in a great measure to the large margin which has existed between the cost and the selling price. Having a large margin of profit, little attention has been paid to scientific accounting." As cost accounting gives an advantage over the unsystematized, so it results also in giving accurate cost records and points out as well the places where excessive costs can be reduced, by the proper application of efficiency. Cost accounting, however, does not mean that you have an efficient plant. It simply shows where costs are excessive. And bear in mind, too, that cost records are not for historical records. It was but very recently that the writer had a talk with a manufacturer who boasted that he had the most perfect set of records of every phase of his business. This man sat at his desk and never went out in the factory or had anything to do with details. On his desk were a set of elaborate records, compiled daily, and as he said himself, he was only the "figurehead." "I look over the reports each morning the records of yesterday's business-and know exactly what has been done. This is the reason that I can come here for but an hour or two a day and then go in for recreation. I simply glance over the reports and put each in its proper binder. Of course, any important things that come up, governing the questions of management, I give attention to by shifting it on its proper authority or directing the policy or change of policy, as the case may be."

It is all very well to go into the specific, but it seems to the writer, from his study of some of our leading industrial works, that the specific should be left until the general principles are accomplished. It is possible to introduce efficiency in one department without the others, but the speeding up of the work here, for instance, has the effect of piling up the work on the department ahead and of causing the one in back to rush to keep the intermediate one supplied. So that, it must be admitted that unless efficiency is applied as a whole its effects are counteracted in some other way. Again, if efficiency is applied as a whole to the manufacturing end and yet the office and administrative force are not in full accordance with it in keeping it up, it again fails. Again, if the proper stimulus or incentive is omitted and if the training is not given in order to teach the worker how to make the bonus (if the incentive is in that form) it will fail. Summing it up as a whole the entire problem resolves itself down to thisthe broad and general viewpoint of the management. From this as a cornerstone is built up efficiency in shop and office.

No One Knows It All

A great many efficiency engineers have failed to acquire the results they have anticipated simply for the fact that the management has taken the old stand-that they know it all. This has retarded the work of the engineer and simply because this feeling spreads through the whole organization, the work of the engineer has fallen far short of expectations. A failure of this kind naturally breeds foes for efficiency. Whether he is blamed for it or whether the blame is laid to the management in not supporting the engineer in the latter's principles, is, of course, a question for each particular case. It is not supposed, however, that all the principles of efficiency are applicable in each case. They have made errors in judgment, but it may be said in their behalf that in general such errors are accountable to the management in not giving all the assistance they might have.

In general (and it is well known) the heads of some concerns have no more right to be where they are than a handler of pig-iron has to be in a diamond-cutting establishment. And knowing in themselves of this fact. they mislead the engineer to cover it up. Since efficiency must be shaped from the management staff to the line organization and thence through the foremen, superintendents and thus to the worker, is it any wonder that the ordinary and every-day "military" organization, which is trained to the manager's policies, is pronounced a failure? Even where

"But what do you do with these records?" the writer asked. "Don't you ever make comparisons? Don't you look to see if your production is increasing, the cost decreasing, or if the cost is increasing, don't you investigate to find out why?"

Did Not Keep His Eye on Records

It is hard to believe, but this man never looked back through his records. Neither did the men who compiled these records ever call his attention to the changes. The men under him naturally followed his policy-if he didn't care, neither did they. As a matter of fact, these records were simply a matter of history and for no other purpose. A glance over them showed the most remarkable variances in comparison. After this was pointed out to him, his policy was changed immediately, and as a result it spread down through the line organization. That is one of the greatest faults of this type of organization-the military type, as it is called. If the man at the head is slipshod, the whole force is likewise. It is the cause of the new method of management which the efficiency engineers have called the "functional" system.

In the "one-man" or military organization, too much work is thrown on the head. As a result he has to shift the work in part on the superintendent or foremen. These

(3) Putting finished piece against wall.... This man was on the day-rate system. Notice the remarkable difference in the time for each one of the three principal steps. Under the functional system, he would have been anxious to do more work, for then his incentive would be the bonus he received for doing more work. It would have been to the foreman's interest to have him turn out more, for the latter receives an extra bonus for the results of all his men. And naturally he would have trained the man to the best ways of doing the several operations on this piece. This man lost his time in going to and from the trucks -they should have been placed so that he did not have to move out of his tracks. He mislaid his nail-punch-put it in his pocket one time and on the bench another time forgot where he put it. Time lost finally in having to walk to the wall to place piece against it. Should have put it on another truck or on a chute where by gravity it would have been conveyed to the man ahead of him who went on with the work. This is just one of the wastes that occur under the military type of organization. In fact, a careful study of a plant under this system will show that but a small amount of the day is given to the doing of real work by the men. Time is lost waiting for material to come to them. Time is lost waiting for the foreman to assign work. No real planning done in a systematic manner (planning may be done to a limited extent in the office, but there is little or none done with respect to the planning of the work for each man and each machine so that each is constantly supplied.)

Work Planned Ahead Under the methods of the functional system of management all the work is planned ahead. Each man and machine is constantly supplied with work. It is similar to the dispatching of a railroad train. Can you imagine the service in time that you would get if each dispatcher waited until the train arrived at the beginning of his division before planning for its movement to the next section? Yet under the military system of management this is just what happens. Under the functional, however, all the work is planned before a movement is made. On paper it is a simple matter to tell the advantages of planning ahead in order to have the men, materials and tools all ready for combination. But to make the average man see that it is necessary to plan all the movements is

another matter. Planning involves how and when. Another objection raised by the average manufacturer to this planning is the extra expense it involves at the start. Unquestionably it will involve considerable expense at first and the results will not become apparent until the system is under perfect control and the entire organization becomes thoroughly in accord and in unity with the purpose. Then, and not until then, will the remarkable results become known Each manufacturer has different requirements in the number of men necessary for an efficient planning department. In some industries but three or four men are necessary to handle the work requiring several hundred workmen. In other shops nearly one-fourth of the total number of workmen, are necessary. It depends entirely on the nature of the business. This is the stumbling block-the manufacturer can only see the added number of what he calls "unproductive labor" on the payroll. If the concern manufactures a limited number of standard articles, but few in the planning department are necessary. If, however, the nature of the business is such that frequent changes are necessary, the planning department must necessarily be large.

Dates of Completion Can be Kept

One of the best features of the planning department is that exact dates of completion can be given with accuracy. The bulletin or routing board gives the location of each job in the factory and the location of each machine in the process. The eye of the superintendent can locate at any time any difficulties by a glance at this board. This is also of great advantage to the sales department, especially in the case of a concern manufacturing special goods on order, as they can answer inquiries concerning the progress of the work with exactness. It does away with the estimating by guesswork on the part of the foremen or superintendents.

As soon as the planning department is in operation, the fixing of standards begins. Time studies are made and the workman who seems to do the best on any particular operation is carefully watched for his method of doing it. This, then, is carefully tabulated and if no improvements can be made at the moment, it is used as a standard and all other similar operations are based on this and the workmen trained to do the operation under this method. After it has been in use for some time and ways are found to further reduce the standard as to time, a further gain is made in the efficiency. Careful records are kept by the planning department and changes are made in the records whenever the standards are changed. Thus an accurate and reliable basis is made for computing costs.

Figuring a New Wage System

After the standards are accurate, a new wage system is figured out. A great deal of care must be exercised in any change of the wage system. The employe is naturally suspicious in this direction. The trouble has been, especially in the piece-work system, that the basis of the wages, the standards, were wrongly figured out. The men used in establishing the standards were wrongly picked out. In one factory, a man's time was used who was inefficient in his methods of handling and working. His time was slow. As a result, the piece-work system based on his time, allowed the other workers to make three times as much as they ever had before. As a result the system of pay underwent a reduction. The men worked still harder under an added burden and even then made almost as much. This resulted in a further reduction. Similar experiences have been heard of for years. As a result, the employe is against any new system. The trouble is and always has been-incorrect basing of standards. Neither extreme should be taken. But the planning department and the time studies, especially if the latter are conducted in secrecy, form the basis for com