Shop Management

92 SHOP MANAGEMENT organizations required to manage different types of business must vary to an enormous extent, from the simple tonnage works (with its uniform product, which is best managed by a single strong man who carries all of the details in his head and who, with a few comparatively cheap assistants, pushes the en- terprise through to success) to the large machine works, doing a miscellaneous business, with its in- tricate organization, in which the work of any one man necessarily counts for but little. It is this great difference in the type of the organi- zation required that so frequently renders managers who have been eminently successful in one line utter failures when they undertake the direction of works of a different kind. This is particularly true of men successful in tonnage work who are placed in charge of shops involving much greater detail. In selecting an organization for illustration, it would seem best to choose one of the most elaborate. The manner in which this can be simplified to suit a less intricate case will readily suggest itself to any one interested in the‘subject. One of the most dif- ficult works to organize is that of a large engineer- ing establishment building miscellaneous machinery, and the writer has therefore chosen this for de- scription. Practically all of the shops of this class are or- ganized upon what may be called the military plan. The orders from the general are transmitted through the colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants and non- commissioned officers to the men. In the same way the orders in industrial establishments go from the