6. Aids that lighten the production clerk's task.— In watching the progress of the work thru the shop, the production clerk has further aids to help him in de tecting things that go wrong or that may go wrong. These are the route sheet, the progress sheet and the bulletin board. The method by which the production clerk checks up the progress of the work in the shop is interesting because it differs so widely from the practice in common use. His mind is continually on the promise he has made to the sales department, that upon a certain date a certain delivery will be made. He therefore begins his daily checking up of the progress of work not by first looking up the orders due to be shipped today, or those overdue, but, on the contrary, by starting at the bottom of the list and making sure that everything necessary to the com pletion of the order just received is on time and is being carried out to the letter. He works up the list instead of down, and the last item to receive his atten tion is the order which is to be shipped immediately. Mr. H. K. Hathaway, in the Engineering Digest for July, 1912, says : The principal cause of the failure to complete orders on time is that little or no attention is given them on this score until the date of shipment approaches. In machine shops a great deal of time is ordinarily wasted in getting drawings and patterns made, and getting materials into the shop. This time cannot be made up after the work is started, and the effort to do so results in confusion, decreases the efficiency of the plant, and causes more or less friction among the individuals comprising the organization.
7. Qualifications for the head of this department.— The production clerk need not necessarily be a man trained in the technic of the particular business which he serves ; if he is in the planning department of an engineering con,cern, however, it will be much to his advantage, and add to his efficiency, if he has had two or three years' shop-practice experience.. Of course, he must be familiar with the processes of man ufacturing, for these determine zuhen a certain oper ation is to be done. It may also be well to mention here that the authority of the production clerk, like that of all other members of this department, is su preme in his own field. Even the Manager or super intendent must respect his authority. But when he has planned the time when certain work shall be done, his authority ceases. Beyond this he has no right to say what shall be done or how it shall be done.
8. Route clerk.—The function of the route clerk is to show km.: a thing is to be done. As soon as the drafting department has shown what is to be done, the planning of the work proceeds to the route clerk. It is his duty to take the information which comes to him in the form of drawings and bills of materials and plan how the product shall be made. He must be able to
read readily the drawings from the drafting depart ment ; he must understand machine construction, so as to be able to analyze it and put in writing or in chart form the methods which show how the manufacture is to be carried out in the shop. Furthermore, he must be thoroly familiar with the location and capac ity of all the machines, so that his routing of the mate rial raay be the most efficient possible.
9. Method of work for the route clerk.—In prepar ing his outline or his diagTam, the route clerk proceeds about as follows : (1) Having analyzed the con struction of the machine he divides it up into groups or parts. (2) He studies the length of time it will require to get the castings or various parts that call for special construction, and the amount of time nec essary to work up the various parts and assemble them. Knowledge of these points enables him to de cide the relative importance of the various groups, and with this scale or order of importance in mind he is enabled to lay out the first draft of his chart or diagram which embraces only the individual groups. (3) Each group is now considered separately and a special diagram or route chart is made of it. This will include, in their order of relative importance, all parts that go into the order, the operations to be per formed upon them, the machines that are to perform the various operations and the material required for each part, with a note whether it is to be purchased from the outside, made especially for the job, or to come from stores. (4) He applies to each part a suitable symbol. This identifies the part as it goes thru the shop, indicates what part of the machine it belongs to, and serves as an operation order-number and an index to the instruction card which is made out for the several operations. In fact, this symbol is used in connection with all the processes involved in the manufacture and planning of this job, at length seiving the cost keeper in compiling his records, and finally becoming a basis for filing any data which may pertain to the piece that the symbol represents. (5) Under instructions from the route clerk, another clerk prepares route sheets and progress sheets upon which the movement of the work thru the shop is recorded. In fact, it is here that the various operation orders, in spection orders, stores issues, etc., originate.
The work of the route clerk in a large plant be comes very involved, and requires that the duties of the office be subdivided. Thus there will often be found one expert who gives his whole time to the making of route charts pertaining to the assembling alone. Other experts will be engaged solely in lay ing out the machine operations for the various parts ; others again will compute the quantities of material required, and the like.