record on cards of the number or weight is placed over each bin or rack. As the articles are requisitioned by the factory management, the numbers or weight extracted from bins or racks are noted on the cards and the supply made up from outside, the aim of a good storekeeper being to maintain a certain high-water mark, below which the stock is not permitted to fall.
Very little of the material issued from a rough stores ever comes back again, but the state of things in the finished stores is different. Here, again, are bins, fixtures (a series of shelves in wood or iron with vertical divisions like large pigeon holes of a desk), and racks, but they all hold finished or partly finished parts. Thousands of axles, cups, cones, balls, nipples, nuts, screws, etc., will be seen all neatly arranged and docketed, the racks hold finished frames, forks, saddles, mudguards, brakework, etc.
The procedure here with regard to issuing the parts is that a requisition comes from the office management, sales or other department, to put through, we will say, 100 machines of a certain model (the requisitions in some factories are much larger, but we will take the above figure as an example). The storekeeper in the rough stores issues to the machine shop and frame builders 100 sets of frame lugs, 100 sets of tubes cut to length and mitred, enough tube to make up 100 seat pillars, fork-sides, and crowns for 100 forks, 200 rims, the necessary spokes, and so on. These are made up into complete frames, wheels, forks, etc., and go when completed to the finished stores; here they are viewed, and re-issued to the finishing department with the necessary tyres, saddles, handles, brakework, and so on.
Each time the parts enter the stores from the factory the work done is entered and the operatives are given