Simplification Creates New Problems for Top-Management

Abstract

The reports of the Lemon Committee and of the Anglo-American Council on Productivity draw timely distinctions between the terms “standardization”, “simplification”, and “specialization”. This paper discusses simplification, with special reference to complex proprietary engineering products. The problems examined are those of determining and controlling a range of simplified products; the determination of domestic standards, classified as “manufacturing standards” and “constructional standards” for the components of those products; the need for, and effect of, more refined manufacturing standards with increasing volume of production; the possibility of obtaining varieties of end-product by alternative assemblies of simplified components, through what is here tentatively termed “rationalized construction”; and the increased complexity of the technical problems which the development of those products entails. Finally, attention is directed towards the new problems and responsibilities with which simplification confronts top-management, partly in the closer control of line of products, but chiefly in the integration of the design, production, and marketing functions.