Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

 34 EFFICIENCY METHODS carrying out the work in the various shops, and reports daily. This clerk may be a single individual in charge, with various clerical assistants under him ; or there may be one such official for each department of activity, in a large works. The copy of the specification sheet which remains in the planning department has the reports of the order-of-work clerk or clerks entered upon it, so that it becomes a detailed account of the progress of the whole order, and the condition and position of the parts at any time. Some simple device is put into use as a reminder (the Americans call it a “ tickler ” x) —some way of calling attention, in the right quarter, to any failure to keep up to time directly it occurs. Then it becomes possible usually to recover the lost time before the delay has become serious; that is, before the part or parts are due in the next place for the next operation. The use of the copy of a specification sheet to a costs clerk will be discussed later on ; but it may be pointed out at once that its records and details are of the greatest help to a man who has not technical knowledge, but is merely concerned with accounting. For it enables him to check quite accurately the actual processes performed on any order, when he comes to charge expenses on that order. Other- wise a misdescription of a job, the quoting of a wrong order number, or some similar slip which charges an operation to an order to which it 1 See an article by R. T. Kent in Industrial Engineering, Jan., 1914.