It will be noted that the duties and functions of the men in the various departments are often decidedly different in character. Thus, there is little in common between the work of the shipping room and that of the labor bureau. It will be noted also that many of the men employed do not work directly upon the product. The engineer in charge of the power house, for example, does no work on the product itself and the power which his department produces may or may not be used on all products. The engineering depart ment may make designs for some while for others it may do nothing. Crane men, office clerks, errand' boys, etc., are employed on work that is general rather than specific, and it is difficult to apportion accurately the amount of time that they spend on each piece of the factory product. The proportion of men that may be thus indirectly employed may be very large, and the modern tendency in all mass produc tion is to increase this proportion rather than to dimin ish it.
This general tendency toward departmentization and division of labor should be carefully noted by the student of cost systems. Certain fundamental prin ciples in modern manufacturing methods work irre sistibly to increase this tendency. The four primary divisions of a business, namely, producing, selling, financing and accounting, are functional divisions. That is, the division is based on the character of the work performed. Again, under the factory manager (see Figure 2) are found several departments, the functions of which are different. The designing of
the product is separated from the actual construction, and the purchasing is set aside as the separate func tion of a specialist. The separation of the planning of the work from its construction should be especially noted. Until quite recently this principle had not gone far beyond the separation of the engineering and the construction department. But recent develop ments tend to carry this principle of the separation of the planning and the constructive function much farther down into the shop itself. Scientific manage ment, so-called, is based intrinsically on a rearrange ment of the work of foremen and workmen, according to the functions to be performed, rather than ac cording to the principles underlying the enforcement of discipline, as heretofore. Whether functional fore manship, as contemplated by scientific management, becomes a large factor in our industrial organization, remains to be seen; but the drift is toward further specialization of this order. Such a separation of functions always increases the amount of general, or indirect, labor and decreases the amount of specific, or direct, labor that is put upon the product. As the tendency grows, the necessity of more accurate dis tribution of cost increases while, at the same time, the difficulties in the way of accurate allocation of cost elements also become greater; all of which points to the need for more refined cost-finding methods as competition becomes keener.