Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1914. 
Efficiency  in  Drug  Stores. 
271 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  his  time.  This  reduced  his  efficiency  of 
supply  to  75  per  cent. 
Because  he  worked  too  many  hours  a  day  to  maintain  a  standard 
condition  of  health  and  mental  vigor,  he  not  only  procrastinated, 
dragged  his  work  and  kept  others  waiting,  but  made  many  blunders. 
The  correction  of  these,  where  correction  was  at  all  possible,  con- 
sumed a  great  deal  of  time.  Taking  into  consideration  his  slow 
accomplishment,  subtracting  the  amount  of  time  wasted  in  correct- 
ing blunders,  and  the  amount  of  time  consumed  in  doing  things 
wrongly,  which  could  not  be  corrected,  his  efficiency  of  use  was 
greatly  reduced.  Since  he  was  too  busy  and  too  harassed  to  plan 
his  work,  he  did  not  standardize  any  of  his  conditions  or  operations, 
leaving  these  matters  entirely  to  chance,  with  the  result  that  his 
efficiency  of  use  of  time  was  only  60  per  cent.  Because  he  did  not 
plan  or  study,  it  naturally  resulted  that  he  spent  a  great  deal  of  his 
time  doing  unnecessary  things,  as,  for  example,  keeping  records, 
that  were  neither  immediate,  reliable,  adequate  nor  permanent.  He 
also  wasted  hours  blundering  along  with  trivial  details  that  ought 
to  have  been  unloaded  upon  a  subordinate  who  would  have  done  them 
far  more  efficiently. 
For  these  reasons-  his  efficiency  of  assignment  was  only  40  per 
cent.,  and  his  end  efficiency  (75  x  60  x  40)  was  18  per  cent.  By 
means  of  the  thirteen  principles  of  efficiency  he  might  have  accom- 
plished just  as  much  with  far  better  quality  in  three  hours  as  he 
had  been  accomplishing  in  fifteen  hours.  You  know  an  analogous 
case. 
To  get  back  to  standardized  operations.  This  is  the  phase  of 
efficiency  that  you  mostly  read  about  in  the  magazines;  it  involves 
time  and  motion  study. 
Without  going  into  detail,  I  have  tried  to  give  you  a  perspective 
of  the  application  of  the  principles  of  efficiency.  This  skeletonized 
elucidation  leaves  many  questions  unanswered  that  will  naturally 
arise  in  your  mind  concerning  their  application  to  the  drug  busi- 
ness. You  may  not  be  able  to  see  how  they  could  possibly  be  appli- 
cable in  the  face  of  so  many  uncertainties,  such  as  occur  in  the  drug 
business. 
Like  a  Socialist  I  answer  by  saying  that  those  uncertain  obstacles 
would  not  exist  under  proper  management.  The  drug  business 
to-day  is  governed  by  outside  influences.  The  task  we  have  is  to 
regain  control  and  manage  according  to  a  definite  business  policy. 
