The Lazy Plant As a
Factor in Building Costs
The war taught a host of American manufacturers one thing—that their previously held ideas of plant capacity were absurdly conservative. Every day they did things that a day before had been branded as impossible, and all because they were driven by necessity.
Thus manufacturing establishments that had sagged into the habit of dignified laziness suddenly galvanized into extraordinary activity. Waste effort was eliminated, waste energy was harnessed, and under penalty of being termed “slacker,” men and machines set new records of production and efficiency.
The lessons thus learned in the war period were by no means impossible of application to peace-time problems. And one of the outstanding lessons had to do with the fact that organizations are like individuals, in that they work best and most efficiently under pressure.
Pressure overcomes laziness—whether it be individual or organized laziness. And laziness is the most costly item in manufacture. The individual who is workng toward a definite objective always “has the edge” on the individual who is just working. The manufacturing plant that is tensioned to meet a keen demand likewise has the advantage of the plant that is making something and hopes to sell it.
The pressure of war necessity is no longer with us, but its place is well filled by the
more satisfactory pressure of peace—the pressure created by intensive Advertising.