Evening star., 1911-08-25
ECONOMY IN MOTION.
Efforts to Eliminate the Man-Han.
ding of Material.
From the Literary Digest.

From the Literary Digest.
A surprisingly large part of the cost
of anything comes from moving 1T or
it's various parts about. whether In
transportation Of the raw material
from source to factory and of the fin
ished product to the market, or In the
numerous complex movements execut-
ed during the process of manufacture,
or in assembling the finished parts.
In his interesting book on motion
study Mr.. Frank Gilbreth has shown
that almost every workman executes
useless movements in doing his work.
In other words, he is firing himself
out for nothing, and his employer is
paying for passes in the air that do
not add to the worlds resources. The
same thing is true of mechanical
operations on large scale. When we
buy an article we are paying for a
great number of these useless motions.
In this case every little motion" is
far from having "a meaning OF Its
own" Many of them are both mean
ingless and useless BY eliminating
them both manufacturer and consumer
will save money and no one Will be the
poorer. Says a writer in Carriers s
Magazines
fence which the mere transference OF
a material has upon its ultimate cost.
Coal may be purchased cheaply at the
mine, but the moment 1t has to pass
to some other place there is involved
not only the cost of railway transport,
but, what are often far larger. the
costs OF handling at each end. One OF
the most prominent examples of the
increase in efficiency by scientific man
agement has been that Of the economy
coal. but in the well equipped estab
lishment coal is no longer handled at
all by any such primitive method as
that OF the man with the shovel: even
at its best, such system is far too
costly.
"The dealer. manufacturer or shipper
who realizes that his profits must come
largely from his economies simply
cannot afford to add to the cost OF the
material the excessive cost of moving
1t by hand. he knows that he must use
some kind OF mechanical appliance.
The same is true Of the steam power
station. in which thousands of horse
power are generated and where thou
sands of tons of coal must be got from
boat or car to the furnaces. When 1t
is realized that the saving in one year
in the handling of $4,000 tons of coal
was $4,000 by the use Of proper mac hin
cry il will be seen that the most scien :
tific management does not lie in in
creasing the capacity Of men, but rath-
er in replacing them by mechanical ap-
pliances of far greater capacity and
efficiency.
Mechanical operations Of the simpler
kinds, in which the handling of mate
rials may be included. represent princi-
pally the performance OF work-that
is. the lifting or traversing Of a mass
OF material through given distance
and hence II is entirely practicable to
find out how much work Is really in
volved in any particular job Of this
kind. This renders IL possible to COM
pare the efficiency Of any one way of
doing the work with any other way
which may be under consideration. so
that something may be learned about
their relative value.
"The handling of coal. for instance,
is definite matter for any particular
establishment; there are a given mum :
ber of tons. the storage bins are at a
known elevation. and the time in which
the coal is to be handled may be ascer-
tained. How to do this work by man
ual labor, by conveyorS. by industrial
railway or by some special method
has been the study Of the engineer for
many years. Manual labor. once the
only method. has always been ineff-
cient and costly. SO that II is not sur
prising that the early attempts to Sc
cure improved shop efficiency began at
this point Various kinds of mechani-
cal appliances followed. until, at the
present time, the use Of conveyors, OF
the type best adapted to the locality
has practically superseded human mus
Gle almost entirely.
use. however. is often the critical point
| in the attainment of the best results
| for any particular service and IL is in
| this matter that the skill OF the spe-
cialist engineer Is exercised to the
greatest advantage. Engineers who