ISSUING AND EVALUATING MATERIAL 1. Issuing materials in general.—It is a cardinal principle in good cost-finding, systems that no mate rial of any kind should be issued from the stores with out a requisition which indicates the authority for the transaction and the account to which the material is to be charged. It is true, of course, that in small shops, particularly where the material handled is of no value for personal use, it will not pay to employ a storekeeper ; workmen may be allowed to help them selves from open bins or racks. As previously noted, these cases are rare; in general, it pays to have a store keeper, whether detail costs are kept or not. He will, as a rule, save the company more than enough to pay his wages. It is universal experience that workmen when allowed to draw either direct or indirect mate rial from the stores without check, become careless and wasteful, not only as to the quantity drawn out, but also as to its economical use. Loose storeroom methods are also likely to lead to dishonesty, pilfer ing and bad habits generally, on the part of employes. Aside from the actual saving made by properly regu lating the withdrawal of material from stores, such regulations serve to accentuate constantly the value of material, whether direct or indirect in character.
2. Requisitions by foremen.—The simplest way to arrange for the drawing of material on requisition is to empower the foreman to issue the required requisi tion. The foreman is provided with an order book, and no material is issued except on an order describ ing the material, its amount, and the purpose for which it is intended. This system is simple and flexible. It responds quickly to any emergency and for this reason it is particularly applicable in the case of small shops. There is no delay in getting material from the stores to the production floor, and in a shop doing repair work this is a valuable feature. In many small shops, where the work is more or less un certain in character, the number of men employed is small, and refined cost-finding methods are not necessary, this simple system will answer all re quirements. It certainly is a vast improvement over the loose methods so often employed in small shops, where every man helps himself and where no check whatever is put upon wastefulness.,
If, however, the enterprise is large and each fore man has many men under him, it is not good policy to fill up his valuable time with clerical duties. He has usually too many other important functions to perform,' and if pressed for time, as he usually is, he will not do this requisitioning well. A busy foreman who is expected to maintain a large output from his department will not be particular or accurate in mak ing out bills of material for marketable product; and if he is also obliged to write orders for supplies and indirect material, he will naturally be very inaccurate in regard to the distribution of the cost of these items. He can, of course, be given a clerk to help him in this work, and this assistance may answer in certain kinds of moderate-sized plants. From the standpoint of in telligent cost finding, however, even this method is unsatisfactory, and it fails for reasons that will follow. In fact, when the situation warrants the employment of clerical help of this character, it is time to discard a simple system for something more advanced and more accurate.
3. Planning production in advance.—Brief men tion was made in Section 5, Chapter II, of the grow ing tendency to separate all planning functions from those that have to do with production. This is well illustrated in the engineering department, where all structural plans are made entirely aside from, and in advance of, actual production. A similar movement is making rapid progress in the production depart ment proper, looking to the planning of all productive processes in advance of the actual productive opera tions. The writer uses the term production depart ment to designate the entire productive organization under the superintendent of production, and not in the narrow sense in which it is often employed to designate what is really nothing more than a plan ning department. Planning departments are being introduced quite rapidly, and the growth of this idea should be studied by those interested in cost finding.