ENGINEERING FOR DEVELOPMENT

(First Draft)

E J Jefferies

March 1969

CONTENTS

PART 1 THE WORLD DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Closing the Gap
Chapter 3 Resistance to Change
Chapter 4 International Technical Assistance

PART II AN ENGINEERING APPROACH TO A PLAN FOR A COUNTRY

Chapter 5 Outline of the Approach
Chapter 6 Setting the Problem
Chapter 7 Basic, Concepts, Terms and Definitions
Chapter 8 Background Data Available
Chapter 9 The Starting Point for a Case Study
Chapter 10 Preliminary Calculations
Chapter 11 Patterns of Economic Growth
Chapter 12 Development Plan for Year 1
Chapter 13 Development Plan for Year 2
Chapter 14 Development Plan for Year 3
Chapter 15 Review of Changes During the Three Years
Chapter 16 The Control of Development
Chapter 17 Financing the Development

PART III THE IMPLICATIONS OF RAPID GROWTH

Chapter 18 Economic Growth and Technological Changes in Rural Communities
Chapter 19 The Influence of Agriculture on Industrial Development
Chapter 20 The Role of Manufacturing Industry
Chapter 21 The Contribution of Industrial Engineering to a Solution

PART IV DESIGNING FOR BALANCE IN DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 22 The Prediction of New Manufacturing Capacity Requirements by Product Group
Chapter 23 The Productivity of Labour
Chapter 24 The Growth of Productivity
Chapter 25 The Calculation of Appropriate Levels of Productivity in New Plants

CHAPTER 24

THE GROWTH OF PRODUCTIVITY

There are various mechanisms which can lead to increased productivity and hence to economic growth, such as:

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• Improved management techniques in an existing enterprise.
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• Improved operations techniques (skill of operatives).
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• Higher output and sales without increased labour force.
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• Higher output without additional equipment.
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• Reduced cost of materials and services (less wastage or lower price).
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• Higher wage rates and profits, without increase in selling prices.
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• Improved quality leading either to higher sales or to higher value to the consumer.
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• Higher demand due to general economic growth, leading to economies of scale.
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• Lower selling price, leading to economies of scale through higher demand.
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• Investment in improved technical processes (implying a smaller work force for a given output or a larger output from the same work force).

Some of these mechanisms involve new investment, either in equipment and buildings - fixed capital - or in stocks - working capital. But a number of them will operate in an existing plant without new investment, merely by the lapse of time combined with the general trend of social and economic development and of prices. These depend largely on the development of skills within the enterprise, both management skills and manual skills. They are not readily amenable to calculation.

In those areas in which industrial managers and designers can most directly influence the development of productivity, that is, in the improvement of skills and in the introduction of new technology, there are two types of change which can be observed. The first is the continuous, day by day, improvement of management techniques, operational skills and production processes which involve little or no new investment. The second is a discontinuous series of decisions to invest large blocks of capital which will be the basis or production during an extended period, perhaps fifteen to twenty-five years. It is in this second field that assessment of the appropriateness of a new technology by calculation of its productivity of labour is most needed, since inappropriate investment will tie up capital which might be better employed elsewhere.

In any "Industry" (in the send of a number of factories making products classified under the same ISIC two-digit product group of Table 3) there will in general be a spectrum of levels of technology and productivity. All factories will not operate with the same production techniques, due to the differing lengths of time since they were established and will not achieve the same productivity. In such an "Industry" a new plant should normally be a leader in respect of both technology and productivity, while those plants so out-of-date and with a productivity level already low enough to act as a brake on the overall economy (i.e. in the lower range of Graph 5) should logically be abandoned or re-equipped. The calculations appropriate to this approach will now be examined.