iNDUSTRIAL PLANTS THEIR ARRANGEMENT AND CONSTRUCTION - 1 9 1 1 - 1NTROI U CTION The inclusion of a volume upon works construction in a library of Works Management is a purposeful recognition of the fact that efficiency and economy in manufacturing must consider much more than the mere operation of the plant in which the processes of production are carried on. The factors considered by Mr. Day-the arrangement and construction of industrial works-are indeed primary. They concern the organic constitution of the factory, and hence are of more potential importance even than systems of management, which concern functional conditions. Functional disorders, even if severe, may be reduced by treatment but an organic inefficiency embodied in the design and structure of the plant itself is incurable, and is imposed in dependent sequence upon all later operations. Mr. Days development of the subject is thoroughly adequate to its importance. His extension of the scientific method into this relatively new field is unique. He defines for the first time, in permanent form, the principles and the practical precepts of scientific plant construction. His work, much of which appeared first in the pages of THE ENGINEER rwo rwo MAGAZINE h , as been developed by a true evolution, following scientific lines of progress. It is guided by intimate knowledge of the subject and dirkted by high ideals. It combines the interest of scientific pioneering with the certainty and authority of conclusion that characterize the master of a specialty. THE EDITOR. -- PREFACE -- When conquest was for spoil and slaves, the con querors came to regard manual effort a disgrace. Until within a century the army, church, medicine and law were the resbected occupations manufactures and trades constituted a despised class. With steam to supersede the slave and serf came the new era of indusirialism. The iron-masters, shipbuilders, spinners, weavers, and engineers, through their surprising accomplishment, took rank with the professions they were seen to be men of the greatest ability they attained to wealth and important positions in the government of nations. Now their successors are bettering their methods, mechanical, manual and systematic they have attained vastly greater efficiency, until the judgment of the scientific worker is seen to be indispensable. We are ever struggling against tradition- but so great is the triumph that Business now ranltswith the Professions, being no longer imitative, or craft, but the ability to utilize all inventions and knowlkdge extant, wit6 constant individual additions and eager appropriation of all advances. During this development each stage presented for solution certain particular problems. These were broad in the beginning, but aye constantly become inore specific, there bang reserved for our day the detailed refinements compelled by competitive conditions. arising from the collective activities of nations now engiged principally in industrial pursuits. A striking example of the methods brought about by these conditions is the latest manner of arrang 4 PREFACE ing and planning industrial plants, based upon a logical scientific method of analysis which recognizes ncl only all physical means available, but those more subtle factors having to do with the human element-the men and women upon whom all industrial undertakings are dependent. It is with these problems that this book deals. Chapters I to VIII, inclusive, are founded upon a series of lectures delivered before the Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, and the engineering students at Columbia University... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.