CHAPTER IV LAYING OUT THE OFFICE Furniture Space Physical Conditions-Influence on Output-Floor The traffic manager should possess the necessary ability to lay out an office intelligently. A great many do not, however, as evidenced by the number of departments whose layout does not follow definite and systematic lines. After making a judicious selection of equipment, appliances, and supplies, they should be so arranged in the department that their use may entail the least lost motion. ACCESSIBILITY OF RECORDS Not infrequently, in some of the large traffic offices, the equipment is so arranged that a man has to leave his desk on one side of the room and make a journey to the other side in order to get information for which he has frequent use. Obviously, records that are in continual demand should be placed as near as possible to the employee using them. Fig. 5, while designed primarily as a chart dealing with general office organization, illustrates the results that follow careful planning in laying out the office and placing the worker. Long trips from one end of the office to the other are eliminated. COÖRDINATE WORKERS Likewise, workers of a class should be put together. The rate clerk, the quotation clerk, and the overcharge investigator have more frequent occasion to use the tariff files than other employees, and should therefore be placed in close touch with them. Fig. 6 shows the arrangement in the office of a Chicago traffic manager who analyzed the functional work of his subordinates and placed together those engaged in corresponding work. The general efficiency of the department can be greatly enhanced by using intelligence in regard to this feature. SPACE Even tho space is expensive, the traffic department should not be slighted. Sufficient room must be furnished to accommodate numerous records of the department and to enable each worker to carry on his work without crowding and interruption. Certain measurements have come to be well defined. For example, aisles should be three feet wide at least, and preferably three and one-half feet. Where employees work back to back, four feet should be allowed between desks. In front of filing cabinets or tariff files an aisle five feet wide enables anyone to pass even when an operator has a drawer fully extended or others are using the files. The space required for each employee, including his desk chair and aisle space, is from 110 to 125 square feet. PHYSICAL CONDITIONS Lighting, heating, and ventilating influence greatly the character and quantity of work turned out. Experts have proved that the efficiency of an office force can be more than doubled by having the physical conditions correct. FLOOR INSULATION Unnecessary and distracting noises are avoided by floor insulation of battleship linoleum, cork carpet, rubber runners, or carpeting. For sanitary reasons one of the first three named seems preferable. Where expense is an item, only the aisle spaces need be so treated. FURNITURE A great many applicants for the position of traffic manager with a concern that has heretofore not maintained such a department immediately kill their prospects by suggesting that it will be necessary to purchase a formidable array of expensive office equipment. There are many of the old-school business men who are not fully convinced of the soundness of investing in the traffic manager himself, to say nothing of added expense of this kind. The traffic man if properly trained can, of course, get along without any equipment other than a desk or chair and can rely on the accuracy of the railroad quotations for his rates, his friends in railroad services for favors, and his store of knowledge in the disposition of certain issues with which he may be confronted. |