All service departments, such as stock rooms, draft ing rooms, tool rooms, and wash and locker rooms, should be centrally located so as to be equally access ible from all the departments which they serve.
Certain departments are by their nature mutually exclusive.
Obviously it would be inconsistent to have a saw mill in the same room, or enclosure, with departments for shellacking and final finishing of wood surfaces, as good work of this character cannot be performed where the surrounding air is carrying even a small amount of dirt or grit.2 Some work, on the other hand, is better done in con junction with other work of the same kind. Stiff hats are dried four distinct times during their manufacture and it would be uneconomical to equip four separate drying rooms in order to prevent retracing one's steps.
11. Growth must be allowed for.—Railroads are now accustomed to look into the future and build their bridge piers and terminals to accommodate the expected increase of traffic. The first requirement for systematic expansion is land. One of the main reasons why big businesses are moving from the cities to the suburbs is that they must provide for future growth. It is essential, however, that a growing con cern shall not burden itself at the beginning to provide for future prospects. One of the surest plans a concern can follow to prevent it from ever requiring expansion room is to incur too heavy an expense in securing a location that will permit fu ture growth.1 12. Expansion not to interfere zeith flow of work.— The buildings should be designed to permit expan sion without disturbing the flow of the work. The simplest style is the one-story building taking its light from the roof. This can expand indefinitely in all four directions. In all multiple-story buildings, side lighting must be provided for and so growth is made possible only by extending the ends or by erecting separate additional buildings, much as a filing cabinet is built up by adding units. This is possible only in schools or textile mills where the work is uniform and can be shifted from building to building without loss. Where the movement is in a straight line from the receiving room to the shipping room the lateral growth will add capacity without changing the method. An example of this system is the plan of the United States Steel Corporation's plant at Gary.
The same idea in multiple-story buildings is shown in the plant of the Wagner Electric Manufacturing Company of St. Louis and the Allis-Chalmers Com
pany. The idea underlying all such building is to have the work which may need the most room in the future, touch the growing end.
By arranging the departments as in Figure 18, the management would exclude growth in department 2 or 3.
13. Taldny advantage of gravity.—The force of gravity being universal, it influences manufacturing no less than railroading. Every time a load is brought down stairs and taken back again, energy is wasted. There are two ways to avoid this waste. The mate rials may be taken directly to the top floor and al lowed to work back systematically to the first thru the manufacturing processes, or they may be started on the ground floor and systematically worked up to the top. The finished product may then be brought down. The first way is usually the better as the energy stored in moving the materials to the top may be economically used to transport them -Ulm the man ufacturing processes back to the shipping room on the ground floor.
Gravity should be recognized in small individual operations as well as in a great mass. In the best or ganized shops machine tenders are no longer allowed to drop their product on the floor. They take it from a movable table at machine height and pass it thru the machine to another movable table so that when the work is finished the materials can be rolled to the next operator, with a saving of lifting and carrying. The trucks should have large wheels and large beam ings. Lifting goods to a car or truck is unnecessary ; the shipping room should be level with the floor of the car or truck.
14. Time element in routing.—Routing, however, involves not only materials and locations but time as well. Much routing in a high stage of development has gone unrecognized because business time sched ules are not often recognized as such, being expressed as quantity of output. The time schedule of the Car negie Steel Company, for instance, had a constantly increasing number of tons of steel per week, and every superintendent who fell below this mark was expected to explain. When analyzed, "5,000 tons per week" simply means that 5,000 tons must be pleted in 7 X 24 or 168 hours ; in other words, that the production of a ton must never take more than "%000, or .0336 hours.