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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 1019.PDF
APRIL 14, 1938. FLIGHT. 361 the staff of this new department had been drawn from the existing three departments referred to above. They would have been familiar with the problems involved, and have known the various works and personnel; the production department's present staff, in their ignorance, and with probably the best of intentions, have been an embarrass- ment and hindrance to the various firms' officials, taking up their time and generally adding to their difficulties. The present Air Ministry organisation is unwieldy and staffs are much too large, especially in the technical and inspection departments. These should be reduced, and some responsibility and a freer hand given to the firms in the industry. The firms should be allowed to have some direct contacts with the actual users of their pro- ducts ; they would then be able to anticipate requirements, deal with defects quickly, and take a more lively interest in producing the best possible aircraft for a given job. Imagine a motor car firm not being allowed to anticipate the requirements of its customers, but instead, having to wait until the customers had put forward their views through various channels to some central bod>, which, -say a year later, issued a specification of such requirements to the firms concerned, and asked them to produce a design for criticism; then another a year later, placed an order for experimental motor cars! By this time most of then- customers would have deserted them and be using foreign cars. ' • . The control of the Royal Air Force and the A.I.D. is to a large extent decentralised. The existing technical, production, contracts, and costing departments should also be decentralised. Area Administration . • . * • •: • ; A qualified and experienced industrial engineer should be put in control of these departments in London, with only a small supervising staff. The country should be split up into areas, with an assistant chief engineer in charge of each area having full control over the area staffs of each of the departments referred to above. Decisions regarding the placing of all major contracts would be made in London and the areas instructed accordingly, but each area H.Q. would deal with all questions regarding contracts, production, inspection, etc., and a considerable amount of time and expense would be saved to the Air Ministry and the firms concerned. A comparison of results obtained in the various areas could be used to keep the staffs on tip-toe; it would create a spirit of achievement, and promotion could be based on results obtained rather than by seniority and ability to avoid responsibility. An advantage of decentralisation is its flexibility in expansion and contraction, and it would be less liable to disorganisation in time of war. Moreover, the staffs attached to an area would know the facilities and personnel of the firms in their area more intimately than under the present organisation. The only specialisation with regard to design is that certain firms concentrate on aircraft for naval purposes as distinct from land-based aeroplanes. As time goes on it appears obvious that designing firms must specialise more and more if the most efficient types are to be produced. The principal designing firms should be allotted types on which to specialise, and their technical staffs should be allowed direct contacts with the Service units using these types. The firms cannot use the aircraft themselves under Service conditions, therefore it is essential that they obtain dnect the views of the trained and intelligent user of their products if the maximum efficiency is to be obtained. It is thought to-day that the maximum efficiency for high-performance aircraft is obtained by the use of the nn-tal stressed-skin monoplane type, but there are still a lar«,- number of duties fo'- which the maximum efficiency; nol necessary, and if such aircraft could be constructed "•> wood a much larger field of manufacturing plant and labour could ]*-. used. The cost is lower with a larger out- Put per man power, and early deliveries result; also, out- put per unit of factory area is higher. . A plentiful supply of good labour is the keynote to effi- cient production. In the pre-cxpansion period a few aircraft firms were working without overtime and night shifts to "Flight" pliota/rap/is More production milestones : The Vickers Virginia (top) wasproduced in wood and metal. Reading down are the Handley Page Harrow, now in service; the Blenheim; and the Battle.The two last are typical modern stressed-skin types. approximately maximum capacity ; others were only work- ing to about 10 to 20 per cent. This meant that in the case of the latter firms the bulk of their labour had either drifted into other industries or had left the district. It is an ex- ceedingly difficult matter suddenly to increase your labour from five to ten times; you cannot get the old labour back and the new labour has to come out of the unemployed who, generally speaking, are the least efficient workers in the district. * The supply of trained labour should be one of the first problems considered when an emergency period approaches. Factories situated in country districts should be kept as fully employed as possible during slack times, even if firms in big labour districts are short of work. Once the country factory loses its men through shortage of work, they leave the district in search of fresh work, it is very difficult to get them back. Every effort should be made to keep the flow of work in a factory going year in and yeai out at as near a uniform rate as possible, It has the most demoralising effect on a steady, reliable man to know that he is likely to be stood- off in a couple of hours if some hold-up in production or reduction of orders occurs. Good, loyal, contended, well- trained labour is essential to efficient aircraft production.
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