Page:Graphic methods for presenting facts (1914).djvu/171

 of output, judged by the angle of the curve at different times, may be seen very easily.

During March the output curve took a rapid upward turn and we can see from its angle that, until the end of the first week in April, the output curve gradually approached the curve for schedule. During the latter part of March the factory not only got out its quota of cars each week but produced more than its quota, making up a little for the distance it fell behind during the first part of the year. Owing to a lack of material, because of a fire in a factory which supplied the crank shafts for the automobiles, not a single automobile could be shipped during the second week in April and only a few in the third week of April. The automobile factory was busy, however, accumulating a large supply of parts and assembling automobiles as completely as it was possible to do without the crank shafts which were lacking. By measuring the vertical distance between the output curve and the schedule curve, it will be seen that the factory was furthest behind its schedule during the first week in May, which is one of the best automobile-selling months of the year. If we count the squares between the output curve and the schedule curve we see that the factory was about four hundred and twenty automobiles behind schedule at the end of the first week in May. As, however, a large supply of parts and of nearly completed automobiles accumulated while the crank shafts were delayed, the factory was able to assemble and ship cars very rapidly when the crank shafts were finally received from a new source of supply. The factory turned out much more than fifty cars per week during the latter part of May and was rapidly catching up with the schedule, until the supply of accumulated parts was used up and the assembling departments were limited to the rate at which parts could be produced in the machine shop. By making every possible effort in the machine shop, the weekly rate of seventy sets of parts was exceeded, and the curve shows that during June and July the rate of shipping automobiles exceeded the schedule rate to such an extent that by the end of the third week the factory had caught up with the schedule production asked for by the sales department. There was, however, a slump in the factory output about the first of August, and it was not until the middle of August that the factory was able to furnish the desired quota of automobiles regularly.

A conference held between the sales manager and the factory manager in September resulted in a statement from the sales manager