18(> Materials tuui Their Hnndlin 



The individual worker has become an operator, 

 using a machine or a group of machines as his 

 tools and doing certain parts of the work which 

 finally result in useful articles for business or for 

 individual progress and comfort. 



Coordinating the Operations. In a large auto- 

 mobile factory, some years ago, they introduced a 

 number of automatic screw cutting machines, to 

 turn out the enormous number of bolts and screws 

 required in the manufacture of the car. They 

 bought the machines and had them installed, but 

 the quantity of bolts was not increased as it should 

 have been. A large proportion of the bolts were 

 fitted with cotter pins to prevent them slackening 

 off in the running of the car, but there was no 

 machine capable of making the cotter pin holes as 

 fast as the automatics could turn out the bolts. 

 The production manager of the plant and his en- 

 gineers had to find out how to build a machine 

 which would drill the holes at the same speed 

 which was used in the production of bolts. The 

 two jobs had to be coordinated; otherwise, the big 

 investment in the screw cutting machines would 

 have been of little profit. 



It is necessary, if the plant is to be efficient, that 

 the operations be properly coordinated, so that 

 the speed of manufacture is balanced according 

 to the requirements of the product. 



This requires accurate knowledge of the char- 

 acter, the time, and the arrangement of each oper- 

 ation and the way in which all the operations dove- 

 tail into each other. It is for these reasons that 



