You remember he was hired to find out why the so-and-so shoes didn't move out the door on time. And you'll remember that instead of clanking up and down from one department to another, he was seen one day picking out lasts from a bin in the assembly room. He had crept up quietly on the POINT OF APPLICATION. The INITIATIVE, you see, or the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE, was the boss's order to get shoes to moving.
Here (in the lasting room) was his POINT OF APPLICATION. The biggest factor in slowing up shoes, he found, was failure to have lasts ready the instant the uppers came down cut and stitched from the fitting room.
The shoes were entered into work with almost entire disregard of this vital point. Oh, yes, they knew they once bought so many pairs of lasts on this style or that in such and such sizes. And in a vague sort of way they tried to regulate the number of pairs sent to the cutting room with the number of lasts which they thought should be available the day the shoes reached the assembly department where uppers, insoles, bottoms and lasts met together—or should have.
A single missing size could hold up a 36-pair lot which included a run of sizes all the way, say, from 7½ to 12.
Today it's all so different. A running inventory is kept of every active last. Each day the lasts which are released as shoes leave the finishing room are added to the supply on hand; at the same time, the lasts which are to be used that day in lasting incoming lots are subtracted.
A job? No, a good girl of moderate intelligence simply added it to a dozen other office chores which she finds time to do daily.
The running inventory, you see, is one of the various activities which, aimed at the focusing point—the moving of shoes out the door—are necessary to bring about a successful conclusion—the successful conclusion, in this particular instance, probably being the saving of the young man's scalp—for the boss was certainly out to get it the day he saw the young production manager pawing over the chunks of maple in the lasting room.
Other activities might be mentioned. Plenty of them. An automatic conveyor which brought back empty racks to the point where they were needed. Semi-automatic elevators which made possible the rapid moving of shoes from floor to floor. Twelve-pair lots which simplified the handling problem, made the job of picking out lasts an easier one—and all in all did much to take the weight off management's shoulders. All these and more are the activities which were needed to bring about a successful conclusion. They were all part of the PLAN.
Today, in that shoe factory, the production manager sits down for an hour in the forenoon and an hour in the afternoon and schedules the next half-day's work which will go to the cutting room. Two girls have been moderately busy getting him the information he needs. Sales have been brought up to date within half a day. He knows how many kid shoes he can cut, how many calf. He knows which patterns can be cut by machine, which must be cut by hand. He knows that certain patterns take longer to go through the fitting room. There's extra stitching or fancy perforations. He must lay off those. And last of all, he knows what he can count on in the way of lasts when the shoes hit the lasting room.
With his two girls, the young production manager does all the work of scheduling.