Page:Graphic methods for presenting facts (1914).djvu/305

 initials in the manner described, assists greatly in preventing unnecessary clerical work, as it eliminates any curves which are not used somewhere in the organization. The man who approves the curve can be told just about what it costs to plot each curve. For instance, if three thousand dollars a year is expended for the labor, materials, etc., necessary in plotting all the curves in an organization, and there are three thousand curves kept regularly, it can be seen that the expense per curve per year will be about one dollar. Therefore, if the man should wish one hundred curves plotted for different data relating to his department, he would be approving an expenditure of about one hundred dollars per year.

At odd times before the end of any year the person who does the curve plotting should begin to get titles and scales in place upon the new cards, which will be necessary at the end of the year when the current curves have reached the right-hand edge of the cards. As most curves continue on the same basis as before, the man who has charge of the plotting would take the new cards to those different men who had approved the curves in the preceding year. If, during that year, any change in departmental organization had occurred which would affect the manner of plotting a curve or the facts which should be shown in any curve, the change would automatically be brought to light by the man who must authorize the continuance of the curve. In large corporations, department heads and officials change so rapidly that continual vigilance is necessary to weed out those records and clerical procedures which are no longer of any use. The authorization plan here outlined, if any man leaves a corporation, would automatically give his successor an opportunity to consider how much of the curve plotting should be continued on the basis formerly used. There is always a great personal difference in the manner in which executives desire reports prepared. The authorizing of curves periodically gives each executive an opportunity to think the matter over and to have data prepared in the manner which is most effective for his individual use. In most organizations the president or the general manager would be likely to have certain standard ways of assembling data and plotting curves, since the chief executive officer must usually refer at some time to each of the records of the different departments. The standards of the chief executive would thus tend to prevent any freak methods being introduced into the general curve-plotting scheme by any department head further down the line.