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The use of standard time values is advocated as a means of measuring and improving productivity in materials handling. Although handling operations are difficult to schedule and are subject to many variations in order, size and quantity, common and repetitive activities exist which are measurable and controllable. Application of Master Standard Data methods and Method Time Measurement to materials handling operations in a public warehouse have demonstrated that accurate standards can be developed. These standards embrace both physical and cost measures. Although a heavy resource commitment is required to implement these standards and worker attitudes may be negative, adoption of these standards is advocated as a positive action pattern for dealing with typically unprofitable handling operations.

In the classic Introduction to Work Study, which is published by the International Labour Office, there is a list of the resources which collectively determine the productivity of a firm. They are set out as lands and buildings, materials, machines and manpower.

FOURTEEN years ago 16% of all employees in our manufacturing industries were what are commonly described as ‘white collar’ workers. They belonged to the group that includes clerical, technical and administrative staffs. If that seems a very high proportion what can be thought of the fact that by 1960 the figure had risen to 21%? The actual rate of growth is even more startling. During that 12 years the total number of employees in manufacturing industry increased by 12% but in the same period the ‘white collar’ workers in that section of the economy rose by 48%, according to figures issued by the Ministry of Labour.

WORK Study is today a much over‐worked word. Like others of its kind it deserves more accurate definition than it usually gets.

A Study in Organisation. Under the non‐committal title “Construction of Esso Refinery, Fawley; A Study in Organisation”, A. P. Gray and Mark Abrams tell the story of how this vast £37½ million venture was constructed in little more than two years—thanks to outstandingly efficient management both at the planning and construction stages.

It will take some time before the value of the recent Production Exhibition held in London can be fully assessed, but there is little doubt that this new departure in exhibitions has left its mark.

MILLIONS of pounds have been recklessly thrown away by the naive Government on useless so‐called defence contracts. The greatest loss has been sustained by the aircraft industry and anyone who has had any experience at all of that industry will find nothing remarkable in such a statement.

WITH the approach of the European Management Conference at Torquay and the news that The Work Study Society will be holding a one‐day Conference in London on October 14th and another in Hereford on November 25th it looks as if work study men will have plenty of opportunities of exchanging points of view this autumn.

THE 1965 White Paper on Prices and Incomes made express provision for pay increases beyond the norm ‘where the employees concerned, for example by accepting more exacting work or a major change in working practices, make a direct contribution towards increasing productivity in the particular firm or industry’. That has hardly the precision of a dictionary definition, so a special report has now been issued to give guidance to those who have to judge the circumstances which could justify higher pay for increased productivity. Its definition of a productivity agreement says it is ‘a means of offering rewards to workers for their co‐operation in the more effective use of resources’.

THE need to increase the productivity of British industry is a common topic and when it is discussed the more economic use of manpower is inevitably raised. What is often lost sight of is the fact that future gains of productivity will be derived, as they were in the past, from a wider use of better machines rather than from more intensive effort by human beings. Such machines are expensive. Some of them, like the sophisticated machine tools described by the grandiose name of ‘machining centres’, are extremely costly.