The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-05-25
Fred J. Miller's Lecture on Methods of Production Ali lords Theme of Discussion In Factory Circles.

In Factory Circles.
 The Bridgeport Works of the Rem ington Typewriter Company have ob- tained distinction among. cridgepcE manufacturing plants on account or Improvements that have been attain cd in efficiency, during the past 1ew years.
 Fred J. Miller, general manager of factories, for the company, in a lec- ture before the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. detailed some of the methods used in this work
 The facts are tersely and clearly presented. and may aid others in in ereasing var production.
 MT. Miller said in part:-
 q do not speak from the standpoint of a scientific management expert or practitioner. I have the honor and the pleasure to be simply the general factory manager of the Remington Typewriter Go, and as such respon- sible for the selection of our scie4tific management consulting expert, Mr. H- L. Can't, in whose opinion the factories of the Remington Company now constitute the best example of the application of scientific manage ment 6n a large scale, and who IS broad enough and liberal enough to say that our attitude toward our em- ployes and the general working con ditions we have established have con tributed very much to the success or the undertaking. In other words, he does not claim to have done it all hfmself
 .-There we're at first five factories in this group of which I win speak. in four of which the system was to be installed They were located in three towns and in two states, and were ern- ploying about 5000 people,. Subse- dueutly, another factory. In which typewriter ribbons and carbon paper are made, was added At the begin ming of my connection with these fac tories, 1t was stated by the owners that they believed they were well managed factories, and believe they were, believe they were well up to the average-as good as most factor ies. and better than very many But they had had varied origins and his tories, they had been originally under the control of various competing sales organisations, and had gotten into their blood, 50 to speak, some of the distrust. and misunderstanding that results from condition of that kind Their practice differed widely-both oth administrative and mechanical Our task at ffryt was to coordinate these factories ane to weld them together into one harmonious and efficient in duStria1 organization
 This work of coordination and hnrmonizing had been going on about 70 year before we began to consider doing anything toward scientifie 2 management. We couldn't adopt the system in use in any one ofethem for an, because no one of themSWas good enough. and to adopt any one of them for the others would have been to arouse certain jeaaousies, and perhaps some active or passive opposition that might have been difficult or expen- give to overcome. It was therefore decided to get the benefit of what others had done along this line, and we employed as consultant MT. Can't, who for many years had been asso- ciated with MT. F. W. Taylor, the fath- CT of scientific management
 "The first thing we undertook to do was to get absolute control of the Administrative functions of our fac tories, and of the flow of materials through them from the buying of the materials and their receipt at the fac- tory, all through from operation to operation- and from department to department. to the finished type- writer To givd an idea of the conn p1exfty of this problem, let me say that there are in the standard type Iwriter as we. make 1t today, about "a. 800 parts. Many of these are re- luufred i'm such numbers that we have established what we call villages in the factories. In these villages are GEroups of machines and appliances .. of these parts. which are there car Tied from the raw material to the fin fshed parts, ready for assembling Tons of steel may be used in such g tdepartment per day, as is the case in the factory where we make the key levers for the Remington and the Monarch typewriters. Another part may weigh no more than a tenth o1 an ounce. and only one of these small parts may be used in a typewriter. h two or three days we may be able to produce a years supply of those parts Between those two extremes there are a great many parts, requir. ing varying numbers of operations and to go through various numbers of departments. If any one of these parts is missing, no typewriters can be assembled or shipped.
 Besides this great variety of parts used on the standard machine. we make in the Remington factories 4S1 distinct typwriters aside from specia, machines. They have LIB different authorized and listed keyboards, ana are made for all the written languages of the world and for many dialects.
 After securing control of our ad- ministrative functions and the flow of the material through the works, we next devoted our attention to wha1 we call the tight spots, in he fac. tories. These are the spots through which it seemed difficult to get the work SO as to keep up with the res of the factory They are shown, a. often as otherwise, by the necessity for working overtime on those jobs By studying and improving those jobs first, we were able to make immedi. ate additions to the product of the factory, and that helps very much fl keeping the peace with those who have an aversion to what they cal -'red tape" and those who are afraid of what they call '-linproductive la. bcrr--that great bugbear of the mod ern industrial establishment At the same time studies were made of ma. chimes and of groups of machines. by putting men upon them, with stop. watches to note every stoppage o1 7 work for any cause whatever. its IA. 1--