Document a4MqjQKO8yO0gyXkvvBJ1pY5X

we can understand why that sys tem worked so well. We had two major products--incandescent tight bulbs and radio receiving tubes. The simplicity of the prob lem was not the reason our pro gram went so smoothly. Behind it was the fact of an on-the-spot top management with on interest in safety work. In operating with a regard for the hazards to life and limb involved in industrial operations, not only were they onthe-spot, but they knew personalty from experience, day to day, week to week, year to year the person nel, equipment, and process, so the program had a personality to it that stemmed from the very top reaches of the organization and helped to make it of importance equal with other aspects of the job. Then came the War with its terrific demand for expansion. In fact the War experience upset us completely--especially our safety and accident prevention work. First, there was the tremendous influx of new employes. Not only the added ones to meet war-time orders, but the terrific turnover we experienced during that period. The draft and the spreading out of supervision contributed to the break up of our experience pat tern. The threads of the post' were gone. The personal know how, the individual familiarity with operations, with possible sources of hazards and accidents were broken and, in many in stances, lost. Top management went on the road or moved away to new locations or jobs. Over crowded conditions increased the problems. New products moved 14 in. We had a lack of help. We could not hire the people we wanted, even when we scraped the bottom of the barrel. The need for new materials--the need to be self-sufficient--the pressure to get-out the war production--all affected the change. It was out of an almost octuol breakdown of our operating sys tem that we developed a new point of view and a new plan-- the plan to decentralize opera tions. That plan is of interest be cause, while Sylvanio in Iota is counted as a large company, the decentralization process broke us down to small operating units, many brand new, many well below 100 employes total, so our ex perience has meaning now for the small or average sized firm. It has meaning for the large firm which, like Sylvanio, Is decentral ized with regard to its manufac turing facilities. Decentralization of operations forces a centralization of admin istration and. service functions. It forced us to centralize our safety and accident prevention work. We were fearful of the change ini tially because, added to 'all the burdens of these war-time changes, we were a little alarmed that we would be so far removed from any personal contact, with front line management out at the finger tips of the decentralized organization; that our program would be a paper program; that we would talk a good game of accident prevention, but really would fail to have a workable one. We feared that the write-up, the chart, the forms, all the pro cedures would look good, but the