SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION IN BUSINESS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3327, 19 December 1917, Page 67

SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION IN BUSINESS.

TESTING BETTER THAN GUESSING. By Jajies H. Collins, in the World's Work. A big window-glass company was having trouble with its packing cases. Costly shipments of window glass were sent out in cases that seemed especially strong and sound. The case would reach the customer in good condition, but much of the glass was broken. Investigation indicated.that damage was done by the case swaying upon itself in transit. This sway, facilitated by the heavy contents, did not hurt the case particularly, but was awfully rough on the glass. "Well, wood is cheaper than glass—get stronger packing cases," ordered the president of the company. This was done. Cases were built twice as heavy. But still the glass was broken. Finally the president turned the problem over to a mechanical engineer. The engineer selected an empty packing case, and had it nailed tight to the floor, and the cover boards put on, just as though it were being shipped full of glass. It was an oblong box. The top and bottom were made of heavy boards, running lengthwise, well braced. The sides were stout, narrow boards, running up and down. He attached some hooks to one of the upper ends, ran w-ire rope from these hooks over pulleys in such a way that weights could be applied to exert a horizontal pull, swaying the case as it was swayed in transit, and began piling on weights 1001 bat a time. "What do you want to do?" asked the interested president. "Ask this box some questions," was the reply. "I want to know where it is weak, and just how weak in pounds. I'm going to collapse it. After we get some facts, maybe we can design a stronger, packing case."

"By Jove! You won't collapse that box with hundred-pound weights!" declared the executive. "It's the strongest shipping case we could buy. You need tons instead of hundreds. Rig up some way of getting your pull with levers !"" But after 6001 b had been piled on, the box began to sway out of line. At 12001 b it collapsed. Its short up-and-down board sides simply sagged until they let go, giving a vivid illustration of what would happen to glass inside. "That's one thing we've found out," said the engineer. "The sides are the weak part. No amount of timber added to that kind of box would make it stronger."

—A Bridge Truss for Packing Cases.— Out of the remnants he had a new packing case made, with side boards running diagonally instead of up and down, and counterwise to each other on opposite sides. When weights were applied to that it stood a pull of a ton and a-half. Eventually a much lighter and cheaper case with diagonal sides was found adequate. This stood a pull of 22001 b, and carried glass without loss. What the engineer really- did was to transform the packing case into a bridge truss. And if records of freight damage, and claims against railways are any guide, many packing cases could be improved on the same principle. Little Johnny Want-t&Know cuts quite a* figure in business nowadays. Things are being reckoned down to -such fine points in every industry that guesswork can no longer be tolerated. Business men are catching this engineer habit of asking questions when they run up against a tough problem—asking the problem to please throw some light upon itself. Whereas they used to speculate or argue about facts that called for a little ingenious measuring or weighing, now they reach for the foot-rule or study where to apply the pulley weights. Whereas they once wondered why a clock machine stopped ticking, now they take it apart in a systematic, experimental manner to see where the tick has gone. The Question Habit.—

The engineer has his question habit drilled into him at college. Back of that habit is a great organisation for conducting tests and determining standards—professional societies for testing materials and carrying out scientific researches, bureaus of standards, and the like. From this organisation there is always flowing a stream of ascertained facts about the strength, projoerties, and behaviour of materials. Already enough facts have been accumulated to improve many products and processes. But the average business man is not getting full benefit from these valuable results as yet, because he. is usually selftaught and inclined to work by rule of thumb. He needs a point of view to benefit in the greatest degree, the point of view of the engineer's question habit—the spirit of Little Johnny Want-to-Know. Little Johnny is an every-day sort of fellow at bottom. Follow him into a big testing laboratory, and he may look quite intricate; for many of the simple questions he brings up must bo answered with special apparatus in the hands of trained scientists. Yet even the complex problem started somewhere from an ordinary question, and the habit of askir.g a problem to explain itself is the main essential. Once the question is formulated, getting the answer may be a matter of common sense calling for little apparatus or technical knowledge. # Some years ago a huge railway terminal was to be built. Among other materials needed was an immense quantity of composition flooring. Salesmen were after that fat order early. They called on the engineers with different brands of flooring, each man claiming that his stuff was best, and producing testimonials to prove it. The engineers did not waste much time on claims or testimonials. They chalked out a long stretch of pavement, in spaces of a

couple of dozen yards or so, and assigned one space to each man. "Have your brand of flooring laid there in your own way, according to ideas of installing to give the best results," they said.

Testing Better than Guessing. — There were a dozen brands or more, of all colours and kinds The pavement look&d like a long, variegated ribbon when it was finished. Then a fence was taken down and the main stream of travel through the old terminal diverted, so that for two years that pavement was tramped under foot by tens of thousands of people every day. Wheu tha engineers wero ready to buy floor composition, they made a study of the way each brand had <jtood up under the traffic—and then devised a flooring composition of their own! In the same terminal there was another problem—that of getting people from lower train levels to the street, for much of the building is underground. Incline walks were decided upon as better than stairs or elevators. What was the easiest grade'for these inclines? Perhaps the problem might have been worked out mathematically, but the engineers took a simpler method. Wherever it was necessary to conduct people from one level to another during the construction of the building, they built an incline at some particular grade, and timed the crowds- as they walked up it. When they were ready to build their permanent inclines they knew exactly the grade percentage up which a crowd could walk with the least effort.

Even with the specialist himself, sup plied with delicate apparatus for test investigations, is frequently called upon to get results by everyday methods There was a textile law-suit in court, and a fibre expert was called to testify. Quite casually, as part of his testimony, he stated that a mercerised cotton thread would suspend a weight of thirty pounds. Little Johnny Want-to-Know happened to be sitting on the benchj and this statement made an immediate impiession on the judge. "Hold on there!" said his Lordship, sitting up. "What sort of thread is that?"

The expert witness exhibited the thread

"You mean to tell me such a thread will sustain thirty pounds?" asked the judge incredulously. "I'd like to see it done." Such tests are carried out under laboratory conditions, of course, with special apparatus. But it would not do to explain that, and pass on to other matters—too much explanation might lose the suit. So the court-crier gathered up about thirty pounds of law books, and the expert proceeded to suspend them by his mercerised thread. Luck was with him that day. It worked! He even swung the law books a trifle to impress the judge. But the risk made his under-vest crawl right up his spine.

Questions, doubts, and mysteries are constantly arising in connection .with materials, and must be cleared up by the testing expert, or somebody with his point of view.

"One test is worth a thousand guesses," say the testing experts. 'Complete working knowledge of the properties of materials is so rare that unsuitable stuff is constantly being used. A dingy .little fact about some minor ingredient in your product may be more important to you than the law of the conservation of energy. Tests bring out the facts, stop losses and mistakes, improve processes and products, increase the purchasing power of the shilling."

Discoveries About Cutting'Tools.— Some questions boh up in the form of trouble, like the glass company's breakage losses, and demand investigation along a new line, because thev have apparently never been answered before. JVlaybe a little common-sense experimenting will give the answer, but often the problem must be passed along to the proper experts, who have equipment for investigating fine technical points. In railway maintenance work there had long been one item of expense that seemed unavoidable—the tightening of track bolts. For these bolts worked, loose in service to such an extent that men had to be. kept patrolling the lines. The blame was placed on the vibration of trains, and many efforts were made to perfect a selflocking device, at a reasonable price, that would keep bolts in place. Recently engineering tests have shown quite another cause. It is now known to be due, partly at least, to the stretching of the bolts by too much tightening. Certainly a track bolt is a rugged piece of hardware, and few people would think of it as elastic. Yet it has limits of elasticity, like everything else, and an extra long wrench in the hands of a zealous trackman is enough to do damage. When engineers realised this, they brought a strong trackman into the laboratory, had him tighten various kinds of bolts with various lengths of wrenches, and weighed all his efforts on a testing machine. With the facts in hand they were able to prescribe standard-length wrenches, so that the average trackman, with the right wrench, san tighten the average bolt enough, but not too much.

A Bich Field.— The weighing and measuring of things that are taken for granted in business, or put forward as claims, offer very rich fields for the man with the Question habit. Many of these claims are not true, and the discovery of the Teal facts about them may bring a profitable change in methods. For instance, a file is a simple tool. Millions of files are used in machine shops every year, and it might be thought that all the facts about them nad been ascertained long ago. In machine shops one can find plenty of superintendents who believe in their instinctive knowledge of files, and pride themselves upon shrewdness in buying. Files wear down with use, and it is customary to recut their teeth by various processes, then put them back into service. That is supposed to be economy. In

ono shop the superintendent had his doubts, so he went into this matter of resharpened files with unbiassed inquisitiveness.

A simple device for cutting metal test pieces with various kinds of files, new and resharpened, was rigged up, and the quantity of Tnetal removed by each file measured. Resharpened files cut only half as much metal as new ones, and though they wero supposed to be very cheap, because their cost was only the charge for resharpening, they proved to be very dear when measured in the wages of mechanics. When a file is worn out in that shop now it goes on the scrap pile. In Sheffield, tests with a special machine have shown that one side of a file will vary so much from the other as to do these times the work, and that a slight difference in price, such as a purchasing agent might think shrewd economy, will mean a reduction of shop efficiency by one-half or more.

The first experiments in high-speed steel-cutting tools were largely in the .nature of elaborate bookkeeping by an inquisitive engineer, the late Frederick Taylor, whose remarkable, articles on scientific business management, appeared several years ago in the World's Work. He went into a huge machine shop, where several hundred different brands of tool steel were being .bought. Each foreman and superintendent had his favourite brand, and thought it superior to every other. All brands were brought together and tested. • —Taylor's Business Management.— None proved to be much better than any other by actual "measurement of work. But. Taylor noticed that occasionally there was a tool that did wonderful work. When that tool was traced back, it was found to be not a superior brand of steel, but a particular tool of almost any good, high-speed steel which had been heated higher than the standard cherry red prescribed by the steel manufacturers for tempering. From the viewpoint of the steel-maker it was a spoiled tool. Investigation showed that here was the real answer to the high-speed-steel question, and a process for tempering tools at higher heats was developed. Common materials often hold important secrets, waiting for Little Johnny Want-to-Know to come along and quiz them. The new theory of the value of sulphur as plant food is an illustration. Two agricultural investigators found that sulphur was a factor in wool-produc-tion. So they set out to ascertain how much of it was contained in crops eaten by sheep. For years and years the basis of knowledge on that point had beep-some old tables made by a scientist who burned plants, and analysed the surphur in the ashes. These tables indicated that the amount contained in the crops was small. Everybody accepted this fact as final.

But sulphur is volatile, and much of it would be lost by burning. The new investigators analysed dried plants and found not merely more sulphur, but' so much that they began experimenting with it as a fertiliser. To-day sulphur is being used rather widely for that purpose. A fair, common-sense test of material may prove a claim to be right, as is illustrated in the case of a hardware salesman who recommended cement-coated nails to a shipping clerk, asserting that they would hold twice as well as ordinary nails in packing cases. The shipping clerk rigged up a home-made test. Fastening with ordinary nails a plank to some beams, he loaded it with weights until it pulled loose. Then the plank was fastened with the same number of cement-coated nails, and held twice the weight, showing that the salesman had told the truth. The shipping clerk used those nails' to make his crates stronger, and the hardware salesman got such a fine, practical selling argument that be wondered why he hadn't thought of that scheme himself.

But one point about Little Johnny Want-to-Know must be remembered—that if he is given any encouragement at all he will soon demand a place on the payroll, with a department to himself. For this question habit leads up to investigating standards in materials and products. Testing Materials.—

It is all very well, when trouble looms up, to locate the cause or to apply exact measurements to claims and beliefs that have grown up round materials; but to make a profit on Little Johnny he must be turned into a factory process—set to work in a routine way, watching everything that comes into the plant and all that goes out. Like every other department head, he needs volume of turnover to demonstrate his efficiency. And so must business concerns nowadays have testing departments ; much of the interest and profit in that line lie in the working out of simple, quick, low-cost methods for utilising the discoveries of testing experts. The hardness of metal is becoming more and more important nowadays, as special steels and alloys are developed for special purposes. Most of the metal bought for a factory must bo tested for hardness, when it comes in as raw material, and also followed through the works as it is forged, annealed, heat-treated, and manipulated generally. Tests for Hardness.— Testing for hardness used to be almost a scientific experiment, for a piece of the metal must be polished and then scratched with other metal of known hardness. That led to pressing two pieces of metal together—one being of known hardness —and to measuring the indentation in the test specimen ; and this in turn led to indenting the test specimen with a hard metal ball. Finally, some years ago, an American invented the scleroscope, an instrument now in general use, which makes the hardness test simply by bouncing a steel ball on the metal to be tested, the height of rebound, measured on a glass scale something like a thermometer, giving the degree of hardness. This rebound principle has been applied to hardness testing as

a factory process, so that its operation is automatic.

At one factory where thousands of steel balls for ball bearings must bo tested, a device was rigged up by which several quarts of balls, dumped into a hopper, would roll one by one out of a trough, drop, a foot or so on to a steol plate, and rebound. If they had the required degree of harchioss the bounce landed them among the accepted balls, but if too soft or too hard they fell short or jumped over. To inspect 1,200,000,000 shot a day, the output of a big shot tower, would be quite a job if it had to bs done by eyesight. But it is managed automatically on a similar principle, for each shot as it emerges for testing has to take a little run down an incline and then jump. If it is a perfect shot it is able to jump into the accepted clas3, while if it is imperfect it falls shot and goes back to be remelted. The testing of metal for composition, tensile strength, and other pointf often requires elaborate apparatus, chemical analyses, and the breaking of test specimens in big machines capable of applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of pull. But a foreman or superintendent with the question habit well developed often contrives simple tests for tools or materials. Needles are an important item in making shoes, for instance. It takes about one needle to each three dozen "pairs of welts alone, and more when there is considerable breakage of needles. The foreman of a big shoe factory started keeping records of needle perfoi-mance. When everything was running smoothly on the welting machines, with little breakage of needles, he took several hundred of those needles and put them away for a standard. A week later, perhaps, there would be a sudden epidemic of broken needles in the welting room. Immediately he equipped every machine with the needles laid aside, and if these broke he knew that the trouble „was not in needles, but must bo sought further. If the needles stood up, however, that was proof of poor quality in those that had broken, and he returned them to the manufacturer for replacement. The Imitation Horse and Wagon.— Routine tests have led to many ingenious devices for trying out products and materials under conditions similar to those to be met in service.

Apparatus such as an adding machine, for instance, will be shut up in a soundproof box in the testing laboratory and operated millions of times mechanically with a counter, in order to determine wear of parts and reveal weakness in design. Paint manufacturers have erected a fence at one of the great seaside resorts, built •entirely of paddles covered with paints of different kinds and brands, which are exposed to weather for long periods and officially examined and reported upon each year.

The same weather test is applied to elaborate series of sheet-iron specimens, to determine resistance to corrosion. For testing paving and road materials there has been invented the mechanical horse and wagon. A circular piece of pavement is built out of the bricks, blocks, or composition to be tested, and subjected to days of wear by a sort of merry-go-round arrangement with two large wheels, one striking the road millions of times with steel shoes—to approximate the tread of the horse—and the other with wagon tyres. Road engineers also use a "rattler" test for paving brick, the brick being banged about for hours in a revolving box and the wear measured to determine quality. Smoking Cigars by Machinery.— Smoking cigars to ascertain burning quality was one of the disagreeable routine duties in a big factory; now it is done by a machine that pneumatically smokes five at once at several different speeds. When the automobile was new the road test for trying out each assembled car was regarded as indispensable. But as the industry grew towns became congested with test cars. Now much of the testing is done indoors, on the different units that go to make up the complete car, and in some plants the power that was formerly needed to carry the car over the roads under the old test method is now utilised to make electric current for lighting the factory. Fine scientific test apparatus in some lines can be used to back up good judgment. The cotton buyer for a textile mill is trained to detect, unripe, immature, and dead fibre in the samples submitted to him for purchase. But there is a limit to his skill. Pie cannot determine the percentages of defective "fibre, and for lack of complete knowledge may accept a lot of cotton that will later make trouble in the mill. . The treasurer of a textile mill got interested in this problem, and began some experiments in microphotography in connection with the buying. Results were both practical and startling. When samples of fibre were photographed under the microscope every defect was revealed in percentages.

Unripe fibre was seen to be lacking in cell walls; poor spinning staple had an imperfect twist; first pickings of the fields were inferior to later pickings. Microphotographs of fibres that give trouble in the mill show up defects in the fibre that call for special adjustment of machinery. This test proved to be so important -that it is now applied to all the cotton bought by that milt, and in one case saved, in one season, many thousands of pound by revealing in the cotton from a whole sections defects due to bad weather conditions, so the mill could refuse that cotton until it became normal again. Pulling Tests for Textiles.—

Buildings have been constructed for the sole purpose of being burned down under test supervision, to "determine what really happens, say, in a theatre fire, and how to safeguard against the real danger. On some sides of his nature Little Johnny Want-to-Know is a radical and a disturber. There are no lengths to which he will not go in seeking answers to his question;, and very often he has

to make progress right against the established order of things. As an example, largo purchases of textiles are being made nowadays on te.-ts of strength. The tyre manufacturer who buys fabric must have stuff that will stand pressure. He cuts test pieces from each lot of fabric submitted, and pulls them apart in a machine that registers the strength, accepting or rejecting according to standards. ■ This pulling test is applied to towelling, sheeting, duck, and many other fabrics. Manufacturers are joften afraid of it aa something uncanny, and hesitate to bid in competition where goods must meet test standards. The dislike of the pulling test was especially strong in this country, standing in the way of a general standardisation of fabrics, until the "war cama along. Then the Government had to place orders in every textile mill, and as all purchases were* made on test the distrust of the system quickiy disappeared. One manufacturer had his eye on a> large Government order for linen towelling, but was frightened by the formidable test conditions it carried. He said that he had never made towelling to stand such an ordeal, and never would. A friendly broker got interested. "Would you fill an order for the same strength goods you are making every day?" he asked. "Certainly." "Well," then, the specifications call for towelling of 6501 b strength. Do yoa know what you are making now? I've just had vonr product tested. It comes up to 8001 b!" The manufacturer took that order and has not been afraid of tests since. —Distrustful Workmen.— Workmen often have the same distrust of Little Johnny Want-to-Know; but ifi disappears when they see how tests really work. An engineer was called in to improve the products of a tile factory. Tila was often found defective. He set up a testing machine and laid down some standards, and for a time many* tiles fell short and were broken in the test. As the workmen were paid on the piece basis and lost their pay for defective tile, they v.-ere antagonistic. When the engineer took them, one by one, to see their own tiles tested, and pointed out shortcomings that could easily be remedied, they understood both the fairness of the system and the faults in workmanship. In a little while that factory was turning out nothing but perfect tile.

Not all the raw material of business is physical. "Much of it is. psychological. Little Johnny Want-to-Know is very busy nowadays getting- the real facts about physical raw materials—metal, wood, fabric, fuel, and so on. He applies tha engineer's question habit to everything in that line, testing and experimenting to acnuire exact knowledge, abolish guesswork, clear up trouble, simplify processes, improve products, cut costs. It is just as profitable to have the facta about the psychological raw materials; but these have to be caught in different ways!. They are in the mind? and actions of people. ' They cannot be brought into the testing laboratory and torn apart, or submitted to a chemical reagent. Yet little Johnny Want-to-Know can apply his question habit to them just as definitely. They can be estimated, and sometimes measured or weighed; and! when one stops taking them for granted, and goes after facts, there may be surprising and profitable results.