CHAPTER XIX. THE ARRANGEMENT OF ENGINEERING ESTABLISHMENTS.

The first and, perhaps, the most important matter of all in founding engineering works is that of arrangement. As a commercial consideration affecting the cost of manipulation, and the expense of handling material, the arrangement of an establishment may determine, in a large degree, the profits that may be earned, and, as explained in a previous place, upon this matter of profits depends the success of such works.

Aside from the cost or difficulty of obtaining ground sufficient to carry out plans for engineering establishments, the diversity of their arrangement met with, even in those of modern construction, is no doubt owing to a want of reasoning from general premises. There is always a strong tendency to accommodate local conditions, and not unfrequently the details of shop manipulation are quite overlooked, or are not understood by those who arrange buildings.

The similarity of the operations carried on in all works directed to the manufacture of machinery, and the kind of knowledge that is required in planning and conducting such works, would lead us to suppose that at least as much system would exist in machine shops as in other manufacturing establishments, which is certainly not the case. There is, however, this difference to be considered: that whereas many kinds of establishments can be arranged at the beginning for a specific amount of business, machine shops generally grow up around a nucleus, and are gradually extended as their reputation and the demands for their productions increase; besides, the variety of operations required in an engineering establishment, and change from one class of work to another, are apt to lead to a confusion in arrangement, which is too often promoted, or at least not prevented, by insufficient estimates of the cost of handling and moving material.

Materials consumed in an engineering establishment consist mainly of iron, fuel, sand, and lumber. These articles, or their products, during the processes of manipulation, are continually approaching the erecting shop, from which finished machinery [72] is sent out after its completion. This constitutes the erecting shop, as a kind of focal centre of a works, which should be the base of a general plan of arrangement. This established, and the foundry, smithy, finishing, and pattern shops regarded as feeding departments to the erecting shop, it follows that the connections between the erecting shop and other departments should be as short as possible, and such as to allow free passage for material and ready communication between managers and workmen in the different rooms. These conditions would suggest a central room for erecting, with the various departments for casting, forging, and finishing, radiating from the erecting shop like the spokes of a wheel, or, what is nearly the same, branching off at right angles on either side and at one end of a hollow square, leaving the fourth side of the erecting room to front on a street or road, permitting free exit for machinery when completed.

The material when in its crude state not only consists of various things, such as iron, sand, coal, and lumber, that must be kept separate, but the bulk of such materials is much greater than their finished product. It is therefore quite natural to receive such material on the outside or "periphery" of the works where there is the most room for entrances and for the separate storing of such supplies. Such an arrangement is of course only possible where there can be access to a considerable part of the boundary of a works, yet there are but few cases where a shop cannot be arranged in general upon the plan suggested. By receiving material on the outside, and delivering the finished product from the centre, communications between the departments of an establishment are the shortest that it is possible to have; by observing the plans of the best establishments of modern arrangement, especially those in Europe, it may be seen that this system is approximated in many of them, especially in establishments devoted to the manufacture of some special class of work.

Handling and moving material is the principal matter to be considered in the arrangement of engineering works. The constructive manipulation can be watched, estimated, and faults detected by comparison, but handling, like the designs for machinery, is a more obscure matter, and may be greatly at fault without its defects being apparent to any but those who are highly skilled, and have had their attention especially directed [73] to the matter.

Presuming an engineering establishment to consist of one-storey buildings, and the main operations to be conducted on the ground level, the only vertical lifting to be performed will be in the erecting room, where the parts of machines are assembled. This room should be reached in every part by over-head travelling cranes, that cannot only be used in turning, moving, and placing the work, but in loading it upon cars or waggons. One result of the employment of over-head travelling cranes, often overlooked, is a saving of floor-room; in ordinary fitting, from one-third more to twice the number of workmen will find room in an erecting shop if a travelling-crane is employed, the difference being that, in moving pieces they may pass over the top of other pieces instead of requiring long open passages on the floor. So marked is this saving of room effected by over-head cranes, that in England, where they are generally employed, handling is not only less expensive and quicker, but the area of erecting floors is usually one-half as much as in America, where travelling-cranes are not employed.

Castings, forgings, and general supplies for erecting can be easily brought to the erecting shop from the other departments on trucks without the aid of motive power; so that the erecting and foundry cranes will do the entire lifting duty required in any but very large establishments.

The auxiliary departments, if disposed about an erecting shop in the centre, should be so arranged that material which has to pass through two or more departments can do so in the order of the processes, and without having to cross the erecting shop. Casting, boring, planing, drilling, and fitting, for example, should follow each other, and the different departments be arranged accordingly; whenever a casting is moved twice over the same course, it shows fault of arrangement and useless expense. The same rule applies to all kinds of material.

A great share of the handling about an engineering establishment is avoided, if material can be stored and received on a higher level than the working floors; if, for instance, coal, iron, and sand is received from railway cars at an elevation sufficient to allow it to be deposited where it is stored by gravity, it is equivalent to saving the power and expense required to raise the material to such a height, or move it and pile it up, which amounts to the same thing in the end. It is not proposed to follow the details [74] of shop arrangement, farther than to furnish a clue to some of the general principles that should be regarded in devising plans of arrangement. Such principles are much more to be relied upon than even experience in suggesting the arrangement of shops, because all experience must be gained in connection with special local conditions, which often warp and prejudice the judgment, and lead to error in forming plans under circumstances different from those where the experience was gained.

(1.) How may the arrangement of an establishment affect its earnings?—(2.) Why is the arrangement of engineering establishments generally irregular?—(3.) Why should an erecting shop be a base of arrangement in engineering establishments?—(4.) What are the principal materials consumed in engineering works?—(5.) Why is not special experience a safe guide in forming plans of shop arrangement?