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continuous output, and dislocations in plant operation resulted in
numerous losses in labor time.
30. The general shortages of electric power forced
plants in a number of areas to adjust production operations to very
difficult and inefficient schedules. Factories frequently had to
adopt short work weeks of excessively long hours, with labor
productivity declining sharply because of the length of the work
day.
31. Critical lack of replacement parts, often of very
minor cost, in many plants required complete rearrangement of work
planning and flow, introduced handicaps to efficient production.
32. The unavailability of one or two modern machines in
a number of plants created "bottleneck situations" which reduced
production levels far beyond potential gains.
33. The difficult circumstances regarding building
construction in France at the present time limits plant expansion
or new building to only those facilities with the highest priority.
Large areas of industry cannot, therefore, implement plants for
optimum plant layout in new plant space.
34. In the plants visited, labor absenteeism was higher
than in comparable U.S. factories, in some cases as much as 60
percent greater.
F. General Observations
35. The status of labor morale and effort in almost
every plant observed could not be considered as unfavorable, but in
contrast was very high. The physical effort put forth by workers
and plant discipline were excellent.
36. The morale of supervisors and engineering staffs
appeared to be satisfactory, although there was some discouragement
and pessimism.
37. Plant staff, particularly engineers, placed undue
emphasis on problems of invention, engineering detail, and
technical perfection. This emphasis was almost a matter of
professional caste and seriously slight the importance of plant
organization and production methods problems.
38. The practice of plant secrecy in France was clearly
unfavorable to productivity, preventing the pooling of industry
know-how and the rapid spread of new developments throughout an
industry.
39. Inadequate technical and trade literature was
observed. If the number of industry journals could be increased,
8
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