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MUCH has been written about industrial engineering, especially in regard to American practice, but a good deal of confusion still exists about the whole subject.

Films Aid Machine Design. A Scottish firm of laundry engineers has perfected a system of film records as the basis on which machine design can be considered, and reports that the policy has been fully justified by results. Film records are made of a competent operator using a machine in her own manner using her own technique; this record is analysed and used as the basis of criticism from which to start building an improved unit. Slow‐motion projection allows time and motion analysis over a period of weeks when potential alterations in the technique and layout are considered.

THE bulk of our hospitals, etc., were built about a century ago and when examined in the light of present‐day needs and future requirements they are found to be far from satisfactory. Millions of hours are wasted annually due to the inadequacies of the buildings, equipment and management. Most of these institutions are trying to give a more comprehensive service to a volume of patients twice as large as they were originally designed to accommodate.

WHEN one considers the fundamental weakness of time study—the personal evaluation of performance—it raises the question whether the predetermined motion time system is going to absolve the time study engineer from future disputes as to standard times. And if it is, then at whose door, may we ask, are these disputes to be laid?

EVERYONE today is busily engaged in devising new methods, bringing about economies in motions, and applying incentives, but is enough attention being paid to the maintenance mechanics, from the human aspect, in these applications of work study?

The past year has ended on a disturbing note. On 2nd December the engineering unions called a 24‐hour strike which benefited nobody and did great harm to the country's industrial output. This affair was followed some days later by the graver threat of a national railway strike which, for the moment at least, has been averted.

NO one will pretend that work study occupies the departmental status that it is entitled to occupy in the organisation structure. Whereas there is every indication that work study's overall influence is wide‐spread, the fact remains that individual departments are kept well screwed down. This seems strange since increased production and optimum efficiency springs from its functions.

Time and Motion Study, as its name implies, has always advocated the integration of all Work Study interests. It has always held the view that Motion Study and Time Study are complementary to one another.

THE study of fatigue from a physiological aspect is a field which motion study technicians have made little or no attempt to explore. Shame on their heads. The physiological simplification of motions aimed at reducing fatigue could have completely offset the notion that motion study is aimed at converting the operator into an automaton. It may well be that an elaborate motion pattern set‐up designed to simplify the work merely succeeds in setting up stresses in the worker. The superimposing of a time‐studied standard for the job may not have taken into account the adaptation of the speed of motions to the physiological limitations of the operator working at a high level performance. Very few practitioners have attempted to study motions in the factory with a view to reducing fatigue and stress as a prerequisite to studying the set‐up for increased production. Still fewer have attempted to evaluate these factors. It is about time they did.

AN interesting comment from the Salisbury and South Wilts team of industrialists who put the first Local Productivity Council Circuit Scheme into operation in their area suggests that this scheme may prove invaluable in awakening general interest in, and in giving practical impetus to, increased productivity at all levels.