At first view the running of a planning department, together with the
other innovations, would appear to involve a large amount of additional
work and expense, and the most natural question would be is whether the
increased efficiency of the shop more than offsets this outlay? It must
be borne in mind, however, that, with the exception of the study of unit
times, there is hardly a single item of work done in the planning
department which is not already being done in the shop. Establishing a
planning department merely concentrates the planning and much other
brainwork in a few men especially fitted for their task and trained in
their especial lines, instead of having it done, as heretofore, in most
cases by high priced mechanics, well fitted to work at their trades, but
poorly trained for work more or less clerical in its nature.

There is a close analogy between the methods of modern engineering and
this type of management. Engineering now centers in the drafting room as
modern management does in the planning department. The new style
engineering has all the appearance of complication and extravagance,
with its multitude of drawings; the amount of study and work which is
put into each detail; and its corps of draftsmen, all of whom would be
sneered at by the old engineer as "non-producers." For the same reason,
modern management, with its minute time study and a managing department
in which each operation is carefully planned, with its many written
orders and its apparent red tape, looks like a waste of money; while the
ordinary management in which the planning is mainly done by the workmen
themselves, with the help of one or two foremen, seems simple and
economical in the extreme.

The writer, however, while still a young man, had all lingering doubt as
to the value of a drafting room dispelled by seeing the chief engineer,
the foreman of the machine shop, the foreman of the foundry, and one or