Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1914. 
Efficiency  in  Drug  Stores. 
267 
his  fourteen  (14)  hours  each  day.  This  is  accomplished  by  the  use 
of  a  special  chart,  conveniently  divided  into  five  (5)  minute  periods 
or  squares.  The  efficiency  engineer  keeps  an  account  of  every  five 
(5)  minutes  of  the  fourteen  (14)  hours,  for  a  period  of  time,  say 
for  one  (1)  week.  At  the  expiration  of  the  allotted  time  the  various 
minutes  are  classified,  wasted  time  analyzed,  and  a  standard  estab- 
lished for  each  of  the  various  operations. 
Possibly  he  filled  fifty  (50)  prescriptions  during  the  week  and 
expended  approximately  thirteen  (13)  hours.  The  standard  time, 
then,  for  filling  one  (1)  prescription  is  fifteen  (15)  minutes  under 
normal  conditions. 
You  will  say  that  it  is  impossible  to  establish  a  standard  for  such 
a  changeable  and  indefinite  operation.  That  is  what  they  all  say. 
If  it  were  easy  it  would  have  been  done  long  ago.  It  can  be  done 
with  a  complex  operation,  having  many  factors,  as  well  as  with  the 
simpler  operations,  such  as  shoveling,  shaving  or  even  writing  your 
name. 
You  now  have  an  annotated  topography  of  your  duties.  Your 
next  move  is  to  organize  the  operations  into  logical  sequence.  That 
brings  us  to  the  second  principle. 
Planning. 
You  now  plan  your  operations.  This  you  can  do  intelligently, 
since  you  are  dealing  with  known  facts.  At  this  point  of  the  reorgani- 
zation your  business  policy  changes.  You  become  the  power  behind 
the  business.  The  customer,  doctor,  salesman  and  others  cease  to 
mould  your  business  to  suit  them.  You  are  becoming  aggressive. 
You  know  how  long  it  takes  to  make  a  sale.  You  make  the  sale 
and  get  away.  The  salesmen  come  and  go  when  you  say ;  not  when 
they  want  to. 
To  plan,  though,  is  not  enough.  The  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
might  plan  to  run  the  twentieth  century  limited  from  New  York  to 
Chicago;  but,. unless  schedules  were  made,  this  plan  would  be  use- 
less. One  crew  might  run  at  breakneck  speed  and  send  the  train  to 
the  junk  pile;  another  so  slow  as  to  consume  unnecessary  fuel.  So, 
in  order  to  avoid  those  conditions,  definite  schedules  are  carefully 
made.    Consequently,  the  next  principle  to  be  applied  is  schedules. 
Schedules. 
A  plan  is  a  general  statement. 
A  schedule  is  a  definite  itemized  statement. 
So,  now,  each  operation  is  looked  after  minutely,  a  definite  time 
