ON WAYS TO INTENSIFY PRODUCTION

I. N. BUTAKOV

More machines for industry, construction projects, transport, and agriculture!

Increase in every way the output of automobiles and tractors!

Give more coal for the national economy of the country!

Produce more goods from local raw materials!

(From the appeals of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) for the 33rd anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution).

Our people have been set a serious task—to surpass the leading capitalist countries economically, i.e., in terms of increasing the production of products per head of population. Only by solving this fundamental economic task shall we begin to approach that abundance of products which is an indispensable prerequisite for the transition to the highest stage of communism. It is clear that, to achieve this, it is necessary in every way to increase the output of products by all enterprises of the USSR: what is required is not only fulfillment of plans, but also their overfulfillment.

The annual productivity \(M\) of an enterprise, in real or conventional units (for example, in constant prices of 1926/27 or in current wholesale prices), may be obtained as a quotient by dividing the number of working days in the year \(T\) by the duration of stay at the enterprise of one unit of output, likewise in working days, \(T_0\). If, however, not a single article is produced at one time, but a batch, a set of homogeneous articles, then the quotient indicated above must be multiplied by the number \(f\) of units in this batch, so that we shall have

\[ M = f \frac{T}{T_0}. \]

If further we denote by \(T_{\text{techn}}\) the time, in the same working days, expended on the productive, specifically technological process, then, multiplying and dividing the right-hand side of the expression for \(M\) by the same quantity \(T_{\text{techn}}\), we shall not change the value

\[ M = f \cdot \frac{T}{T_{\text{techn}}} \cdot \frac{T_{\text{techn}}}{T_0}. \]

It is perfectly clear that a reduction of \(T_{\text{techn}}\)—the time of the technological process as such—can very appreciably increase the middle one of the three factors \((T/T_{\text{techn}})\). Here the decisive role is played by speed methods of various kinds, by the achievements of the Stakhanovites. This is the field of technological creativity directed toward accelerating the course of individual operations in the production cycle, at the same time bringing about a reduction in the cost of production through shortened time standards, better use of equipment and production space, etc.

From the history of the Stakhanovite movement we know, for example, that Stakhanov achieved an increase in labor productivity thanks to the correct division of labor in the mine: formerly a face worker had not only to cut coal, but also to timber the face while the pneumatic pick stood idle. Busy—

...with his brigade at the Gorky Automobile Plant achieved a sharp increase in the speed of forging shafts as a result of the rational organization of the workplace, when all preparatory and auxiliary work was performed in advance by other workers, and he did not have to leave his own workplace.

The shoemaker Smetanin attained high productivity on a lasting machine by “carefully studying his movements and not making a single superfluous gesture.”

These movements, and their individual elements, may proceed differently in the same job for different Stakhanovites. Hence the natural conclusion is that if one composes a new recipe for work out of the most productive elementary movements of different Stakhanovites, then the work as a whole should be performed faster than it was by any one of the Stakhanovites. This was the path taken, on the proposal of engineer Kovalev, at the fine-woolen cloth factory “Proletarian Victory,” where, under conditions of mechanized production, such a measure is especially effective.

Many Stakhanovites use the method of the bundle or batch, in order to apply a technological operation not to one object, but to a stack of homogeneous objects; here multi-place fixtures are readily employed. This, for example, was how the well-known milling-machine operator Gudov worked. The law on the five-year plan for 1946–1950 provided for ensuring the mastery of multi-spindle machines, in which a bundle of tools is directed at the object being machined. The introduction of multi-spindle drilling of longitudinal beams in the car-frame assembly shop at the Ural Railcar Plant reduced the time for drilling a set of beams from 440 to 82 man-minutes, i.e., by more than a factor of 5.^1) In individual cases, multi-cutter machining can reduce the time by 30–40 times.

High-speed metal cutting, which has become widely developed at our enterprises on the initiative of the lathe operator Bortkevich, yields a large reduction in machine time. Thus, at STZ this reduction was achieved by a factor of 3–5; 40 machine tools were freed up, and the need for labor was reduced by 91 persons. The annual saving of funds amounted, per machine tool, to 1,800 rubles for lathe work and 2,200 rubles for milling work.^2) At the Saratov Bearing Plant, the transfer of a substantial portion of groove-grinding machines to high-speed cutting increased their productivity by 25–30%.^3)

Numerous proposals for minor rationalization, fixtures for accelerating the setting of parts on machine tools and for manual work, as well as innovative scientific and technical methods introduced into production—all this can greatly accelerate the course of individual production operations. At the S. M. Kirov Plant in Leningrad, in connection with the introduction of high-frequency current hardening, the heat-treatment time was reduced from 36 hours to 2.5 minutes.^4) At the “Kalibr” plant, replacing thread cutting on microscrews with rolling increased labor productivity by a factor of 15. One of the most advanced methods of mechanical processing is broaching, which increases productivity by a factor of 6–10 compared with milling. Replacing labor-intensive manual polishing of axle necks with rolling reduced the working time by half, from 15 to 8 minutes. The transition in the tool industry to the method of thread rolling in the manufacture of taps increased productivity by 60–100 times. At the “Elektropribor” plant, the process of drying wood took 14–15 days.

^1) Reserves for Increasing Labor Productivity, 1947, p. 52. (Collection.)

^2) A. Arakelyan, Ways of Better Utilizing the Fixed Assets of Socialist Industry, 1950, p. 16.

^3) Ibid., p. 16.

^4) Gusakov, Accelerating the Turnover of Circulating Assets—a Source of Higher Rates of Socialist Reproduction, 1950, p. 17.

The use of high-frequency currents for drying this wood shortened the time of this process to 10–12 hours.¹ The replacement of riveting by welding, as is well known, gives a saving of time of 20–40%. Automatic welding by Academician Paton’s method ensures an increase in the productivity of manual welding by 5 times (with sheet of 5 mm), by 10 times (with sheet of 10 mm), and by 40 times (with sheet of 40 mm).

Many such examples can be cited, testifying to reductions in processing time for individual operations of the technological cycle, achieved through the introduction either of Stakhanovite methods or of new technology. Here there is an enormous field for further work, all the more so since at machine-building plants the share of manual labor is still large: machine time in the total amount of technological time ranges from 30 to 60%. For example, at the leading Ural Wagon Works it is 30%.² Even at such advanced and highly mechanized plants as automobile plants, workers engaged in manual labor constitute about half of all personnel.

But all these insertions into the production process of individual accelerating factors may fail to bring the desired reduction in the time \(T_0\) of the entire production process as a whole; they may fail to increase the output of products, since they may sink into the general disorganization of the latter. Thus, for example, before the Patriotic War it was established for one large Moscow machine-building plant that the principal parts were undergoing technological processing for only 7% of the total time of their stay at the plant, and, taking account of inspection and sorting, for 15%. The remaining 85% of the total time they were in warehouses.³

If we take such production as the production of turbines (or something similar to it), it will turn out that the technological process accounts for barely 15–20% of the total time, and thus 80–85% of this time is non-technological.⁴

From what has just been said it follows that, in order to increase the output of products, it is necessary in every way to increase the ratio of technological time to the total time during which the item remains in production, i.e., to increase the factor \(\frac{T_{\text{techn}}}{T_0}\), which is a fraction, and often a small fraction, strongly affecting the reduction of the output of products \(M\). Therefore it is important that the management of an enterprise should strive in every possible way to bring this fraction closer to unity, when the output of products \(M\) would depend exclusively on the technological time \(T_{\text{techn}}\), as such. The case would be ideal; under practical conditions, however, one must always take account of the factor \(\frac{T_{\text{techn}}}{T_0}\) as a relative efficiency coefficient characterizing the degree of approximation to the ideal case.

In such an increase of the factor \(\frac{T_{\text{techn}}}{T_0}\) there is a serious reserve for reducing also the cost of a unit of production, since the overhead expenses of the enterprise are thereby distributed over a larger number of units of output, making each unit cheaper. Striving for the all-round reduction of the total time \(T_0\), which in the speed of its reduction must outstrip the rate of decrease of the technological time \(T_{\text{techn}}\), we shall at the same time obtain ever greater and greater effectiveness from

¹ Ibid., p. 17.
² Klimenko. Ways of increasing labor productivity in machine building in the USSR. 1950, p. 59.
³ Izvestiya of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Department of Economics and Law, 1949, No. 3, p. 183.
⁴ Advanced technology for Leningrad industry. 1945, p. 96. (Collection).

individual accelerating measures of Stakhanovites, engineering-technical personnel, and scientific workers from the standpoint of increasing the output of products, thereby contributing to the solution of the basic economic task facing our people.

Let us note that \(T_0 = T_{\text{tech}} + \sum t_i\), where \(\sum t_i\) is the time, in working days, spent on the “pores” in the technological process as such, caused by the insufficient organization of the entire production process as a whole, by insufficient implementation of the principle of parallel and sequential operations and their compaction, as well as of the flow-line principle, by interruptions in supply, accidents due to poor maintenance of equipment, lack of preparation of the technological process, transport operations in moving raw materials from warehouses, semifinished products between shops, in delivering finished products to the warehouse, by the presence of stocks of work in process in intermediate warehouses and products on test stands, by finished products lying in warehouses before shipment to consumers, etc. In the matter of increasing the multiplier \(\dfrac{T_{\text{tech}}}{T_0}\), the organizing role of the administrative-technical personnel and of the Party organization of enterprises is exceptionally great, especially now, when the question is being raised of transition to a through mechanized flow with the use of automatic machine lines.

The first such automatic lines appeared in the USSR at tractor and automobile plants. Thus, for machining the cylinder-head block of the KhTZ tractor engine, an automatic line was put into operation consisting of 14 multi-spindle machines with 134 working spindles, reducing the technological machining time by a factor of 8. This line is serviced by only two workers. The saving in labor power amounted to 56 persons. The part, once placed at the beginning of the line, is automatically moved from one operation to another. In exactly the same way, an automatic line for machining the engine block of ZIS-150 trucks, with an output of 26 blocks per hour and two-shift operation, requires only 7 persons instead of 65 under the old methods of work. Instead of 76 min. per block, only 8 min. are now required, i.e., 10 times less. The line consists of 16 aggregate machines with 228 working spindles.

Suppose, for example, that it has been possible to reduce by half the time an article spends in the technological process (a serious achievement!). If, before the reduction, the technological time \(T_{\text{tech}}\) amounted to 20% of the total time \(T_0\), so that out of 100 hours of the latter the technological time \(T_{\text{tech}}\) accounted for 20 hours, then, with the duration of the “pores” unchanged, \(\sum t_i = 80\) hours, the technological time will now be \(T_{\text{tech}} = 10\) hours, i.e.

\[ \frac{10}{80 + 10}\cdot 100 = 11.1\% \]

of the total time \(T_0\), and the output of products will increase only by

\[ \frac{2 \cdot 0.111}{1 \cdot 0.2} = 1.11 \]

times instead of two times.

This is how the weak organization of the production process as a whole is reflected in the output \(M\) of articles, despite great achievements in the technological side of the matter!

It is known that in prerevolutionary times Eng. Khlebnikov, in the Nizhnedneprovsk railway-car workshops, organized the release from repair of freight cars in 3 working days, applying, with a threefold increase, the theoretical one-day schedule of parallel and sequential operations that he had developed, whereas the average idle time of these cars under repair on the state railways network was then on average two weeks. This measure was carried out essentially without changes in technology, piece rates,

composition and specialization of brigades. Parallelizing the phases of work is one of the most effective ways of reducing the time that objects spend in processing. K. Marx already wrote (Capital, vol. 1, p. 286): “Various processes, gradually perfected and successive in time, become simultaneous with processes existing in space.

This makes it possible to obtain a larger quantity of commodities in a given interval of time.”

Of great importance for reducing the time parts spend in production is the application of the route system of accounting, under which each batch of parts simultaneously put into production, or each labor-intensive part, is accompanied by a route card. Such a system makes it possible to control the movement of parts in the production process, raises technological discipline, and facilitates the struggle against rejects.

The task must be set of shifting to an hourly production schedule, which ensures rhythmic work of the enterprise, coordination of the entire production process as a whole, synchronization of adjacent operations, the arrival of parts at workplaces in small batches, and the mechanization of transport.

In this case, too, one must note the full vitality of the words of I. V. Stalin, spoken at the Seventeenth Party Congress: “After the correct political line has been given, organizational work decides everything, including the fate of the political line itself—its fulfillment or its failure.” None of us can have any doubt about the correctness of the political line on the necessity of surpassing the main capitalist countries economically. Consequently, organizational work in the direction of increasing the multiplier \(\frac{T_{\text{techn}}}{T_0}\) must be the decisive force here; moreover, “responsibility for our failures and shortcomings in work henceforth lies nine-tenths not with ‘objective’ conditions, but with ourselves, and only with ourselves” (Stalin).

Despite the decisive significance, at the present stage of our development, of the organizational factor for increasing the output of products, characterized by the multiplier \(\frac{T_{\text{techn}}}{T_0}\), a considerable increase in output is nevertheless possible even with the former, still insufficiently perfected organization of production: first, by reducing the technological time, as was indicated above for the particular example, by half, when output may increase by 11%, and second, by increasing the multiplier \(f\), when the enterprise embarks on the path of innovation in the technological aspect of the matter on the scale of the entire plant, when the latter becomes Stakhanovite in all its subdivisions. In this case part of the equipment and production areas are freed, owing to which it becomes possible to increase the multiplier \(f\)—the set of products in simultaneous work, and this in itself ensures a large output of products. Therefore the initiative of foreman N. Rossiiskii at the Kalibr plant with respect to the collective organization of Stakhanovite labor is of such great importance. But it must be borne in mind that, if one follows this path alone, the proper increase in the turnover of circulating assets is not achieved, and a large simultaneous stock of materials will be required.

It is clear that if organizational measures aimed at increasing the multiplier \(\frac{T_{\text{techn}}}{T_0}\) (relative efficiency) are combined with collective technological innovation throughout the plant, which has become Stakhanovite, then the effect of such a combination from the point of view of the growth of output will be maximal.

The “Kalibr” plant, far from having used all its possibilities, but having boldly adopted a combination of both of the indicated paths, obtained effective results, for example, in the manufacture of calipers in hours¹ (Table 1).

Table 1

Even for this advanced plant, the technological cycle in 1949 amounted to only \(14,6\%=\dfrac{4,7}{32,3}\cdot100\) of the total duration of the production

Fig. 1

cycle, so that \(\sum t_i/T_{\text{tech}}=\dfrac{85,4}{14,6}=5,85\), and, undoubtedly, there is still un-

...little has been done to reduce the “idle lying,” which amounts to

\[ \frac{24}{32.3}\cdot 100 = 74\% \]

of the total time \(T_0\) that the calipers spend in operation.

The resulting increase in output will not require additional working capital, since the latter will be freed in excess as a result of the reduction in the cost of the manufactured product. If, at the same time, the movement begun by the Kolomna Plant is expanded, then, owing to the savings obtained in materials, it will become possible to produce additional output basically also without subsidies from the state in materials.

In conclusion, the considerations set forth above may be cast in mathematical form. From the basic formula

\[ M = f\cdot \frac{T}{T_{\text{tech}}}\cdot \frac{T_{\text{tech}}}{T_0} = f\cdot M_1\cdot M_2 \]

it is clear that

\[ M_1=\frac{T}{T_{\text{tech}}} \]

or

\[ M_1\cdot T_{\text{tech}}=T, \]

i.e., the dependence between \(M_1\) and \(T_{\text{tech}}\) is hyperbolic. This dependence is plotted in Fig. 1, where it is assumed that \(T=300\) working days.

From Fig. 1 it can be seen that reducing the technological time \(T_{\text{tech}}\) from 20 to 10 working days (by a factor of two) could increase output

Fig. 2

from 150 to 300 pieces (also by a factor of two). On the other hand,

\[ M_2=\frac{T_{\text{tech}}}{T_0} \]

or

\[ M_2\cdot T_0=T_{\text{tech}}, \]

i.e.,

\[ M_2\left(T_{\text{tech}}+\sum t_i\right)=T_{\text{tech}}, \]

whence

\[ M_2\left(1+\frac{\sum t_i}{T_{\text{tech}}}\right)=1. \]

Putting

\[ \left(1+\frac{\sum t_i}{T_{\text{tech}}}\right)=Z, \]

we have

\[ M_2\cdot Z=1 \]

—the dependence

again hyperbolic, while the dependence of \(Z\) on \(\dfrac{\sum t_i}{T_{\text{tech}}}=y\) follows a straight-line law.

Both dependences are plotted in Fig. 2. From Fig. 2 it is clear that appreciable changes in \(M_2\) with a change in \(y\) occur only for small values of

\[ y=\frac{\sum t_i}{T_{\text{tech}}}; \]

at values \(y \geq 3\), however, it turns out that \(M_2\) changes little, owing to the approach of the branch of the hyperbola to the \(Z\)-axis as its asymptote. In the latter cases the fractional factor

\[ M_2=\frac{T_{\text{tech}}}{T_0} \]

becomes so small that it is capable of greatly reducing even high values of

\[ M_1=\frac{T}{T_{\text{tech}}}. \]

Let, as was indicated above, the technological time \(T_{\text{tech}}\) be 20% of the total time \(T_0\).

Then

\[ y=\frac{\sum t_i}{T_{\text{tech}}}=\frac{0.80}{0.20}=4 \]

and, consequently, \(Z=5\), so that

\[ M_2=\frac{1}{5}=0.2. \]

Therefore, at \(M_1=150\), output will be only

\[ 150 \times 0.2 = 30 \text{ pcs.} \]

If, however, the technological time is reduced by half, then

\[ y=\frac{\sum t_i}{T_{\text{tech}}}=\frac{0.80}{0.10}=8 \]

and

\[ Z=9,\qquad M_2=\frac{1}{9}=0.111. \]

Therefore, at \(M_1=300\), we have

\[ M=300 \times 0.111 = 33.3 \text{ pcs.,} \]

i.e., output will increase by only

\[ \frac{33.3-30}{30}\cdot 100 = \frac{3.3}{30}\cdot 100 = 11\%, \]

as was also determined earlier.

1. Voprosy ekonomiki, 1950, No. 6, p. 21. Article by Shifrin. ↩