QUEER PROBLEMS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 58, 31 May 1927, Page 10

QUEER PROBLEMS

THAT FACE CAR MAKERS SHIPBUILDING AND JAP. MONOPOLY Difficulties in connection with the supply of Nipponese or Formosan camphor wood —which is a Japanese Government monopoly—or a sudden boom in ship construction —reducing the supply of steel plates for chassis frames —would seriously embarrass the production of cars. This is as true as it is strange, and was one of the tit-bits of information recently given the British Association in a lecture by the Morris Motors, Ltd., production manager. Camphor wood is used by the firm in the manufacture of steering wheels, being particularly strong, and at the same time easily worked and moulded. At the same time, figures lately made available show that the Cowley factory, has a penchant for overcoming difficulties. Despite the coal and general strikes in Britain last year, and other industrial troubles, Morris beat the record-production for all previous years by a substantial margin. Export trade alone increased in less than 48 months from a rate of 800 to 8,000 cars yearly. Continuing his lecture, the production manager said there were nearly 10,000 separate individual parts, including nuts and bolts, in a Morris car. Obviously, he added, as a car is unsaleable with one part missing, it is anything but child’s play to control supplies, especially when one remembers that a finished motor is scheduled to come through the works every two minutes. A season's programme of Morris cars includes a quarter of a million square feet of plate-glass for windscreens! And tens of thousands of miles of insulated copper wire are used, not to mention steel-tubing, which, if placed end to end, would stretch from the North Cape to Wellington. As sales continue to rise, production problems assume larger proportions, and become more intricate, yet costs must be kept down and value up.