from spoiled work as a percentage of the total payroll could have filed back of it cards showing the percentage loss in each department. If the spoiled-work curve for the whole business should go up in any month, the manager could see instantly in which departments the percentage of loss had increased and in which the percentage had decreased. Letters could be sent to the foremen of the departments having bad records, calling their attention to the bad showing made.
The cross-index of curves, obtained by filing the cards according to function or by expense-account number instead of by department, is of tremendous importance to the busy executive. This feature alone may save a large amount of his time by making necessary information more accessible, and by affording information which may show leaks in his business that he would otherwise never know to exist. In a business of any size the cost of making one blue print each month from each original curve card is almost insignificant. The guide cards showing functions or account numbers remain useful year after year, and it is necessary only to discard a blue print for each card each month and to substitute the latest blue print made from the original curve card after a new point has been added. Having the original cards filed by departments and the blue prints filed by function or account number, the manager may instantly consider his business from whichever point of view he desires. He may study the whole operation of a given department, or he may study one function or expense account in its effect upon his business as a whole.
Practically every company which does an annual business of $1,000,000 or more would find it a paying proposition to have a room reserved in the office as a general record or information department regarding all the facts of the business. Though such a room might be combined with a technical library for books relating to the particular art or industry in which the company finds its field of operation, it is advisable to have the amount of furnishings in the room limited so that there may be no likelihood of valuable confidential papers being lost or misplaced. Such a room really needs to have no more furniture than filing cases like those shown in Fig. 217, a large table, and a drawing table or a flat desk for the man who plots curves.
It would be the function of a man having an office like that described to collect for the business all the data and facts which would be of any assistance to the executive, the officers, or the department heads. Most of his work would relate, of course, to getting data and plotting
