Importance of Planning.

Now, in regard to the railways, I am a strong advocate of planning methods. Experience has been my teacher, and I notice in the various engineering magazines that a development has taken definite form in the matter of planning output, that I think is worthy of bringing to your notice. It seems to have taken on the title of the “Spot” system, which suits it very well, although we did not call it anything else but the “Schedule System” in the old days. The “Spot” idea had already been built into the Angus Shops of the Canadian Pacific Railway before I joined them, in 1909, and it is universally used for building new rolling stock, but its application to repairs to rolling stock is not so old, at least so far as I know.

Now, the facts to face are the developments of the last five years, and we find railway workshops reorganising and rebuilding, to meet the competitive conditions of to-day, and adopting the “Spot” schedule system as a base for their operations. We have reorganised our workshops, and the are eminently suited to the adoption of this system, without any constructional or machinery alterations whatever.