Every mechanical industry has been materially affected by the war. Either the volume of product has been greatly increased, the kind of work has been changed, or the plant has been taken over for entirely new products. The extent to which it has contributed to the war effort has depended on the equipment available or the management, largely the latter.
The war emergency has shown that real mechanics can adapt many machines to uses for which they were never intended, while men accustomed to having special machines for every job have waited for new equipment to be built. We shall never know how much time has been lost in this way or how much material and labor have gone into machines that need never have been built. Frequently this was due to lack of broad vision on the part of production men. But in some cases, at least, new machines were demanded because of their value to the plant after the war.
In other instances machine tools, both old and new, have been and are being run at considerably below their real production capacity. While some of this can be laid to an ill-advised labor policy, most often it can be traced to inefficient management, which includes poorly planned flow of materials, slow procurement of tools, and other parts of the management program.
Some of the delay in the production of war supplies is due to unnecessary and unreasonable specifications as to materials, dimensional tolerances, and finish. Added to this has been inspection by inexperienced men who seem to feel that the more work they reject the better inspectors they are. This has resulted in the rejection of many parts that would have functioned perfectly in the completed product and opens up the disputed question of detailed specifications. Many good engineers contend that the purchaser of any product should specify the results he desires but no details as to construction except overall dimensions when the piece must fit some other member. In other words, specify results but not details.
One excellent argument for this practice is that in many cases specifications are drawn directly from machines already in use and thus prevent the acceptance of newer and better machines that have been designed and built since the original machine was constructed. This is mentioned because the present system of detailed specifications is depriving the armed forces of much good material at a time when it is badly needed.
Some of the conversions of large plants to war work involving an entirely different product have not been as satisfactory as anticipated. Even concerns which had been markedly successful in their own line of work have failed to get into production on war work nearly as rapidly as they had expected. While some of this delay has been due to not securing new and special equipment as rapidly as anticipated, the main reason for delay has been the failure of engineering and management to appreciate the intricacies of the new products and the differences between them and those to which they had been accustomed. This has been particularly true of the differences between the building of automobiles and airplanes and applies to both the planes themselves and the engines and other mechanisms, such as landing gears.
Instead of starting with the practices of the plane builders and improving them as experience proved feasible, all this previous experience was set aside in some cases and plans made for entirely new types of tooling and methods. This procedure is perhaps understandable in view of the great success attained in large automobile plants in securing unbelievable outputs of their own products. But the attempted transformation has been disappointing because of its failure to produce planes at the rate predicted and promised.
There is little doubt as to the final results of the entry of automobile engineers and management into the aircraft field. They are sure to be beneficial to both industries, and especially to the production of planes for the Allied Forces. Nor can the experience gained fail to be of lasting benefit to the cause of air transport for both commercial and private planes.
The delays should not be considered as reflecting on either the airplane or the automobile industries. The nature and uses of their products brought about very different rates of development. Airplane design, even in peace times, changes much more rapidly than automobile design, because engineers are dealing with forces and elements much less understood. Combat conditions bring changes even more rapidly, so that many builders are prepared to make changes after each 100 planes. The combined knowledge of the engineers of the two industries cannot fail to be extremely valuable to both.
While, as previously stated, there have been too many delays because of failure to utilize fully the possibilities of machine equipment already available, there have been outstanding examples where the output from existing plants far exceeded their expected quota. A notable instance is the case of a builder of automobile motors and parts who took a contract for a well known medium-horsepower radial engine used largely in tanks. Utilizing their old equipment to a remarkably large extent, they started production in record time. In addition to this they increased their output far beyond what had been considered possible and continued to turn out more and more engines as the months went by. This indicates the extent to which practical management affects output and enables the utilization of both men and machines not trained or designed for war work. The vision which enables a shop to adapt machinery to work of different kinds is a quality which makes production men valuable to themselves and to their employers.
While this ability to adapt to new conditions is particularly important in time of war, it may be equally so in time of peace. Sudden demand for planes, engines, or guns makes early production doubly valuable. A thousand planes a month in two months may be worth more than ten thousand a month a year later. There are also peacetime emergencies where a quick change-over in production may save the day for a manufacturer whose former market has been lost by a sudden change in design, in buying habits, or in tariff changes.
In a similar way the ability to utilize small shops on subcontract work has made it possible for many concerns to greatly increase the output of their products which are vital to the war effort. This has been true in such widely separated items as gyroscopes and milling machines. Here again the ability of management to adapt itself and its shop practices to meet changed conditions has meant much to both the firms themselves and the country at large.
Instead of making it difficult for the small shops by discouraging them at the start, as has been done in some cases, these concerns have helped the small-shop men tool up for the new jobs, have sent them their own skilled men to instruct new workers, and have relieved them of as much detailed bookkeeping as possible. One prime contractor has planned to utilize dozens of small shops equipped with only one or two machines apiece. Men are shown how certain work can be done on their machines. The parts then go to another shop for further operations. Some of the parts which must be heat-treated and tested for cracks with Magnaflux go to the parent shop for these operations and then go to other small shops for finishing operations.
It will be interesting to note the effect of this after the war. When a group of small shops have cooperated successfully it will be surprising if this experience does not affect their future business relations. It may well cause a trend toward continued cooperation and thus have a marked effect on many small industrial communities.
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