Bureau of Shop Planning

structural subdivision in the system of shop management that directs economic work in shops and sections of shops and carries out technical, economic, and operational planning. A bureau is usually established in large shops. (In small shops economic work is organized by an economist.) It is administratively subordinate to the shop superintendent; systematic work in the bureau is directed by economic planning and production control departments. In the technical and economic sphere the bureau determines the basic indexes of the shop’s technical, industrial, and financial plan in terms of production, technical development, labor, and prime cost. It organizes the development and specifies the technical and economic norms to be used in compiling the shop’s technical, industrial, and financial plan; it determines the economic efficiency of the shop’s organizational and technical measures; and it analyzes the results of the production and economic activity of the shop and, along with other offices, takes measures to improve it. The bureau works out production programs and daily shift tables for output by the production sections of the shop; it ensures complete and efficient loading of equipment and production areas; it controls the supply of raw materials, stock, semifinished products, and the necessary documentation to the sections; it analyzes the performance of sections with respect to shift, 24-hour, and ten-day plans, and so on. One of the bureau’s important functions is to ensure evenness of production in the sections and work areas of the shop in order to achieve a steady, uninterrupted output. Toward this end, the bureau develops schedules for the manufacture and output of products and keeps strict watch to make sure that they are complied with. The bureau ensures that the manufactured output is produced and dispatched from the shop on time; it organizes the work of industrial warehouses; it sees that the standard consumption levels for warehouse stock and unfinished products are maintained; it registers and transfers semifinished components and units from one section of the shop to another for successive processing or assembly; and at the specified times it conducts inventories of the remaining merchandise and valuable materials.

In very large shops the bureau is divided into an economic planning bureau, which performs technical and economic planning, and a bureau of production control, which carries out the duties involved in planning an operational timetable.