Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

CHAPTER VII STANDARDIZATION OF EQUIPMENT A. The Stores Department The question of how to keep effective control over stores is one to which managers have lately given much attention. If a business is counting its costs carefully, and at the same time trying to get work done more expeditiously, it cannot afford on the one hand to have capital locked up in, and space occupied by, superabundant supplies, nor, on the other hand, to have work delayed for lack of material. A manager aiming at general good order and control desires to store his material systematically, and to give it out with due formality, rather than to leave supplies about the works for all and sundry to help themselves. We shall see that the same sort of reform is usefully applied to the treatment of tools. Two things are insisted upon in proper manage- ment ; first, the keeping of store records in such a form that they constitute a “ perpetual inventory,” i.e., an arrangement by which the quantity in stock of each sort of material can be ascertained at a moment’s notice ; and, secondly, the predetermina- tion of the maximum and minimum quantity desired for each sort—these quantities being a guide to ri