Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT 37 clerks under a production clerk, who was responsible for the shipment of orders. There were a— Route clerk. Instruction-card clerk. Rate-setting clerk. Order-of-work clerk. Balance-of-stores clerk. Those interested in the historical development of the idea of planning as a separate activity will find the first suggestion of it in print in Mr. H. R. Towne’s now famous article, " The Engineer as an Econo- mist.” 1 He speaks of proper shop management and shop accounting, and says the control must be exercised by persons able to “ observe, record, analyze and compare essential facts.” A very clear account of an elaborate system which seems to attain almost all the aims of a planning department is that given by John Nelson, of the Bullard Machine Tool Company’s dispatching system.2 The charts seem excellent and are very clear, and the methods chiefly those of Taylor or his followers. The writer claims that every day “ the dispatching department has ascertained inside half an hour the exact cost to date of every machine in process in the works, and the estimated amount of money which would be required to complete all orders.” He adds that “ charts and cards do not bring results in themselves. They are the reminders which insist constantly that the management shall 1 First printed in Trans, of Amer. Soc. of Mechanical En- gineers, 1886; reprinted in Engineering Magazine, April, 1916. 2 Iron Age, vol. Ixxxix., p. 1.