Man Hours

"Order of the People's Commissar of Tank Production #117-Ms

January 16th, 1942

Lately, many directors and chief engineers do not dedicate necessary attention to the issues of improving technologies, introducing new progressive technological processes, increasing amounts of instruments, etc, as a result of which time expenditure at various factories is unbearably high, which causes extra demand in tools and manpower.

For example:

1. The T-60 tank takes 2500 hours to produce at factory #37, but 4700 hours at factory #264, 1.9 times greater.
2. A V-2 diesel engine takes 2700 hours to produce at factory #76, 1800 hours at the Kirov factory, but at factory #75 the same diesel engine is produced in 600 hours.
3. The Krasnoye Sormovo factory takes 2500-3000 hours more to make a T-34 tank than factory #183 took in its time and the Stalingrad factory does now.

It is clear that, instead of carefully and systematically working to reduce costs of producing vehicles, instead of getting technologies and use of tools in order, instead of training workers, many directors and chief engineers take the path of least resistance and complete plans only by increasing the number of tools and workers. The People's Commissariat cannot and will not support this kind of extravagance.

I order that:

1. Chiefs of the production and planning departments must provide me with the standards for time consumption to produce KV, T-34, T-60 tanks, hulls for them, and the V-2 diesel engine, taking the leading factories as a baseline.
2. After standards are established, calculate the requirements for equipment and workforce.
3. The technical department (comrades Ginzburg and Rybkin) must transfer the experience of leading factories in lowering the labour requirements to factories that are falling behind.
4. Directors and chief engineers of tank, hull, and diesel factories must:
1. Within ten days re-evaluate the excessive time consumption and develop specific measures of improving production technologies with the goal of reducing time consumption.
2. Force existing technical, technological, and labour calculation departments to work properly. Warn the leaders of these departments that their work will be evaluated based on the reduction in times it takes to produce each vehicle, and not by the number of requests for new equipment or new workers.

Again, I'm warning directors and chief engineers of factories that, in time of war, we need to maintain strictest economy of tools and labour force. Directors who consider their duty to complete the plan "at any cost" must be told off. The plan must be carried out with minimal costs, not "at any cost".

People's Commissar of Tank Production, V. Malyshev"

RGAE 8752-4-82 pp.1-2