Shop Management

124 SHOP MANAGEMENT can be reached if some of a given class of implements are the best of their kind while others are poor. It is uniformity that is required. Better have them uniformly second class than mainly first with some second and some third class thrown in at random. In the latter case the workmen will almost always adopt the pace which conforms to the third class instead of the first or second. In fact, however, it is not a matter involving any great expense or time to select in each case standard implements which shall be nearly the best or the best of their kinds. The writer has never failed to make enormous gains in the economy of running by the adoption of standards. It was in the course of making a series of experi- ments with various air hardening tool steels with a view to adopting a standard for the Bethlehem works that Mr. J. Maunsel White, together with the writer, discovered the Tay lor-White process of treating tool steel, which marks a distinct improvement in the art. The fact that this improvement was made not by manufacturers of tool steel, but in the course of the adoption of standards, shows both the necessity and fruitfulness of methodical and careful investiga- tion in the choice of much neglected details. The economy to be gained through the adoption of uni- form standards is hardly realized at all by the man- agers of this country. No better illustration of this fact is needed than that of the present condition of the cutting tools used throughout the machine shops of the United States. Hardly a shop can be found in which tools made from a dozen different qualities