Little secrets of economic victories
In the comments below previous article about assault missile a curious fact has come to light. Quite a few people do not have a clear idea of the comparative cost of various industrial products, which of course include weapon and ammunition. This was manifested in the ridiculous, in my opinion, assertion that a product made of dozens or even hundreds of parts, produced by enterprises of various ministries using very complex technology and with manual assembly, is cheap.
One might think so if one knows nothing about industrial production, especially mass production. However, in this very industrial production, each processing operation, each detail has its own economic value, that is, it costs money and the expenditure of resources. And this can be shown using a conditional example, which, by the way, has educational value for understanding some aspects of the rear economy during the war.
Number of machines
Here is a hypothetical example. There is one very simple operation - turning some product, say, a shell, on a lathe. The operation lasts 1 minute. It would seem, what could be simpler? But do not hurry.
The production volume is 100 million units per year. This figure was chosen so that the impact of the scale of production on the amount of required costs could be seen more clearly.
During wartime, there was a six-day work week with one day off, that is, 312 working days with a 12-hour shift.
To make 100 million pieces in a working year, you need to make 320512 pieces per day, that is, turning operations.
Mass production is when simple things become incredibly numerous
Of the 720 minutes of a 12-hour shift, approximately 10% of the time spent on preparing the workplace and the personal needs of the worker must be excluded. This is 72 minutes, leaving 648 minutes of pure working time per day, during which operations are performed. But here too, approximately 7% of the time spent on initial and final operations must be excluded: inserting the part, securing it, turning on the machine; and in reverse order: turning off the machine, removing the part, placing it on the rack. For different types of machines, these time costs vary somewhat, and the method for calculating the standard time for machine processing is very complex. A simplified and rough calculation is used here. So, this is another 45 minutes of time, and thus 603 minutes remain per working day, when the machine turns the part. Since the operation lasts 1 minute, then one machine processes 603 parts per shift.
How many machines are needed? 320 pieces per day divided by 512 pieces per machine - that's 603 lathes. Half a machine is, for example, a machine that periodically works on this operation.
Each lathe requires 43 square meters of production space. Therefore, 22 square meters of production space are required to accommodate these machines.
Material costs
That's not all. The DIP-40 lathe has a motor power of 18,5 kW and consumes electricity during operation. 603 minutes is 10,05 hours, and thus one machine consumes 185,9 kW h of electricity per day. All 531,5 machines - 98 kW h per day. All machines during the year - 819,1 kW h.
30,8 million kWh is a decent amount.
If we take the typical for that time rate of thermal power plant production of 4500 hours per year, then to generate this amount of electricity, 6,8 thousand kW of installed capacity will be required, roughly two turbines of 3000 kW or four of 1500 kW. Accordingly, boilers for them.
Now we throw coal into the firebox. According to wartime standards, 1 kg of good coal was consumed per 0,8 kWh. Accordingly, 24 tons of coal will be needed to generate electricity.
The railway would need 1541,5 wagons to transport this amount of coal. But for one 16-ton wagon, 2000 kg of coal in a locomotive was spent on a 516 km journey, so the railways would need to have 795,4 tons of coal for locomotives to transport this amount of coal, the delivery of which by rail costs another 25,6 tons of coal. In total, 25 tons of coal.
With an average production of 38 tons per month per miner, it would take 55 miners to mine this coal.
It's a killer job in the mine, I must say.
They also need ore support, that is, logs that support the roof of the workings in the longwall. For 1000 tons of production, 51,1 cubic meters of ore support were used, that is, a total of 1297,9 cubic meters of timber will be needed. It needs to be prepared and delivered.
Here it is, the ore stand, supporting the roof of the adit, in which a mechanical conveyor is installed for rolling coal from the face to the mine cars.
And here's how this ore is obtained. "You, me and the party. You, me and the party" - a well-known matter.
The total consumption was 30,8 million kWh of electricity, the production of which required the consumption of 25,4 thousand tons of coal and 1,29 thousand cubic meters of wood.
Financial expenses
If we assume that electricity was produced at factory power plants with a cost price of 5,5 kopecks per kW h, then the monetary cost of electricity consumption is 1 rubles 695 kopecks.
Including transport operations, the transportation of 2000 tons of coal over 24 km corresponds to transport work of 665,2 ton-kilometers, which at a rate of 49 kopecks per ton-kilometer amounts to 330 rubles 400 kopecks.
Every ton-kilometer was bought with the hard work of the locomotive crew
Labor costs. 532 machine operators are required with a salary of 450 rubles per month, and an additional 40% of their number of auxiliary workers, that is, another 212 people in round numbers, with the same salary. Also, it is necessary to take into account 55 miners engaged in supplying this operation with fuel, each at 800 rubles per month. A total of 744 workers in metalworking with an annual wage fund of 4 rubles, and 017 workers in the coal industry with an annual wage fund of 600 rubles. A total of 55 rubles is the cost of labor.
Total financial costs: 6 rubles 241 kopecks.
From this we can deduce the cost of one operation - 6,24 kopecks.
This, it must be said, is far from a complete and comprehensive calculation, since there are also expenses for lubricants, spare parts, machine repair costs, lighting and heating of workshops, there are capital costs for building workshops, constructing and installing machines, their depreciation, and so on. But in general, the calculations provided cover the main factors of the economic cost of this operation.
And this is just one operation - turning on a lathe!
The Little Secret of Economic Victories
The same story with all the parts and components of weapons, military equipment and ammunition. Each of them requires the consumption of materials and energy, labor, transportation work, as well as equipment installed in pre-built production facilities.
Already on this basis, a comparison can be made. A product of 80 parts will be cheaper, with the same processing of the parts, than a product of 100 parts. A product of the same number of parts will be cheaper if the processing is simpler, for example, stamping instead of milling, or casting without processing instead of casting and turning on a machine.
This, by the way, makes it clear why military-issue weapons and equipment are crude and unfinished. Because finishing operations are an expenditure of energy, labor, and equipment, and there was a shortage of all of these. Eliminating unnecessary processing operations that did not affect the combat and technical qualities of the manufactured model of military equipment could provide very significant savings.
Now the economic significance of the Stakhanovites and their overfulfillment of the plan. Fulfilling the norm by 200%, 300% and more was possible only with the help of some technical improvement. If one of the turners figured out how to perform the same operation not in 1 minute, but in 30 seconds, this, in our example, gives a saving of 266 lathes that can be transferred to other processing operations, 372 workers who are transferred to other jobs, 28 miners who will provide coal for other industries, 15,4 million kWh of electricity transmitted to supply other enterprises, 770 cars that can be transferred to other loads. Well, and 3,1 million rubles in saved costs. In other words, any technical improvement in the processing of the final product entails the release of resources along the chain in all related sectors of the national economy, which are immediately redirected to other, equally urgent needs.
And if someone has figured out how to do without this processing operation altogether, then the entire volume of resources and labor described above is freed up and directed to other needs.
This is how the USSR survived the war years, having lost a significant part of its industry from evacuation, occupation and destruction. The most comprehensive simplification, reduction in cost, and rationalization of all production processes without exception allowed for much more efficient use of the remaining resources and the production of much more equipment and weapons than the enemy expected.
Hence the indisputable conclusion: any simplification and reduction in the cost of production of weapons, equipment and ammunition is an absolutely useful and positive thing for the military economy.
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