Joseph Slater Lewis MICE FRSE (4 June 1852 – 27 July 1901) was a British engineer, inventor, business manager, and early author on management and accounting, known for his pioneering work on cost accounting.Chatfield (2014, p. 379).
Biography Lewis's early life was spent largely in Helsby, Cheshire at the Rake House, where he was born."Obituary of J. Slater Lewis," in: The Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute London, England, 1901. vol. 60, no. 2, p. 330–331, col. 1 After attending a private school at Nantwich, he received further education at the Mechanics' Institutes in Manchester."Obituary: Joseph Slater Lewis" in Proceedings. Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Great Britain), Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Great Britain). 1901, p. 1286. (online at gracesguide.co.uk, 2013.) Lewis was apprentice at a land agent and surveyor, named George Slater, in Northwich from 1868 to 1872. In his younger years he had been particularly interested in agriculture and had been secretary to the Wirral and Birkenhead Agricultural Society. In the 1870s he was working as a coal trader in Malpas, and turned his attention to mechanical engineering and electricity.
In 1879 in Helsby Lewis started his own company in electrical engineering. The next year he invented and patented a self-binding insulator for electric telegraph wire, which he started to manufacture. This device got adopted across Europe and in the United States. After he had travelled to the United States to sell his American rights, he extended his company's work into other branches of electrical engineering, then merged with a neighbouring company to form the Telegraph Manufacturing Co., Limited, where for some years he was managing director.
In 1892 Lewis became manager of the electrical engineering company W.T. Goolden & Co. in London, which specialised in mining machinery. After two years, in 1894, he joined the rolling mills company P. R. Jackson & Co., to start up an electrical engineering department, eventually becoming general manager of the entire company. In 1900 he became director of the Brush Electrical Engineering Company, where Emile Garcke had been managing director since 1891. In the summer of 1901 he died suddenly from an attack of apoplexy.
Lewis was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1898 elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute.
Work At the start of the Second Industrial Revolution, books on the operation of business institutions were quite rare. Midway through the 19th century American railroad executives Henry Varnum Poor and Daniel McCallum had published some ideas about a modern system of management, but their impact was limited. However, in the 1880s, societies of civil and mechanical engineers in the United States and in Britain stimulated a stream of publications.Allen Kent, Harold Lancour (1972). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Volume 7. p. 384
J. Slater Lewis' Commercial Organization of Factories (1896) was one of the seminal works in Britain, along with works such as Garcke, Fells' Factory accounts, their principles and practice (1887/89), and Francis G. Burton's Commercial Management of Engineering Works (1899). and others. Those works contributed significantly to the establishment the new discipline of cost accounting.
Commercial Organization of Factories, 1896.
In 1896 J. Slater Lewis published his "Commercial Organization of Factories." Hugo Diemer (1904) listed this work as one of the seminal works in the field of work management, which evolved into Industrial engineering. In his "Bibliography of Works Management" Diemer summarised the essence of this work:
Mr. Lewis's comprehensive work of 540 pages deals with administration, organization, and accounting. The fact that a specific system is traced through the work, with elaboration of its minutest details, makes the work one that requires the closest sort of application and study in order that one may get from it the principles generally applicable. Much attention is devoted to strictly commercial office-accounting.To Mr. Lewis belongs the credit of making a very full exposition of the important subject of the proper distribution of establishment charges, as he calls them, or expense accounts as generally designated in America. Chapter XXIII of the work devotes seventeen pages to a thorough treatment of this subject, which is carried out even more fully in Chapter XXXIV, on "Works and Job Office," in which the "Standing Order" system is also explained.Mr. Lewis makes use of the chart method of circles and arrows as previously employed by Garcke and Fells, in illustrating the connection between the accounts and forms illustrated. He also carries the chart system a step further, to illustrate the staff organization of the factory.Hugo Diemer. "Bibliography of Works Management," in: Engineering Magazine. New York, Vol. 27. 1904. pp. 626–658.
McKay (2011) suggested, that this work "might be the first manufacturing management text. Lewis provides a very thorough discussion and mapping of a factory's decision making and information flow, details the cost accounting, and describes how manufacturing was orchestrated from order taking to shipping.'"McKay, Kenneth N. "The Historical Foundations of Manufacturing Planning and Control Systems." Planning Production and Inventories in the Extended Enterprise. Springer US, 2011. 21–31.
Aim and purpose In the Preface of the work, Slater Lewis (1896) explained about the aim and purpose of this volume:
Notwithstanding the progress of the age, every manufacturer still devises his own system of accounts, has his own books and forms specially drafted and printed and his clerks educated in methods which may be of little or no value to them in other factories. There is, in fact, no recognised system for the student to learn, and none for the schools to teach : nor are there any examinations through which managers, time cost clerks and others may receive certificates for proficiency in one universally accepted system. Engineering, save in the matter of factory accounts, is endowed with acknowledged formulae, rules, tables, and data of every description, the acquisition of a knowledge of which the State has deemed to be of national importance, and technical schools and other State-aided institutions have come to stay; but whether the legislature will ever recognise the exact relationship between successful engineering and scientific book-keeping, and afford the rising generation opportunities of qualifying themselves for positions where both are indispensable conditions, remains to be seen. It is beyond question, however, that the largest and most successful industrial undertakings are those where minuteness of detail and perfection of organisation have received paramount consideration : a fact which should, in itself, especially in these days of world-wide competition, make the commercial organisation of factories a matter of the first importance in every country with any manufacturing pretensions.Slater Lewis (1896, p. v–vi), cited in Urwick & Brech (1946, p. 75).
In the opening of the first introductory chapter, Slater Lewis further explained:
This book is intended as a practical handbook for the use of manufacturers who wish to adopt modern methods of organisation. It is written throughout from the point of view of an organiser and manager, rather than from that of a professional accountant, and the author hopes that this feature will commend it to those who have to bear the responsibility of conducting large engineering and manufacturing undertakings.Slater Lewis (1896, p. xxv), cited in Urwick & Brech (1946, p. 75).
And furthermore: The author is satisfied that it is almost as difficult to persuade those who have the responsibility of conducting large industrial undertakings that a complete and intelligent office organisation will save money, time and worry, as it was a few years ago to convince them that the use of modern machine tools was indispensable to good workmanship with cheap production. Now, however, that it has been established by experience that special machinery for each manufacturing operation, the consequent division of labour in the works, is the only economical method of production, it may be clear that the same principle should be applied to the division of labour in the office, by reducing the clerical work to pure routine. To expect this to be carried out with old-fashioned books and foolscap paper would be equivalent to expecting the production of a high-class engine by old-fashioned appliances at the same price and within the same time as one turned out by the aid of the latest labour-saving machinery...Slater Lewis (1896, p. xxvii), cited in Urwick & Brech (1946, p. 76).
Duties of the manager On the duties of the manager, particularly general management, Slater Lewis (1896) presented an exacting and constructive view:
The duties of the manager are of a most responsible nature, and special stress should be laid on the importance the paramount importance of his being a strict disciplinarian. He must be a practical man of the world, a good organiser, and, above all, must possess tact and judgment. He should be known as a man who means what he says, and who conveys the impression to one and all that he means to be obeyed. As regards the technical details of the business, he should be a thoroughly practical all-round man. He need not necessarily have an intimate acquaintance with the mathematical or other minutiae of each branch of the business, but must have a strong capacity for administrative work. He should have an instinctive knowledge of what his customers really require, and know the smartest and cheapest way of supplying their wants. He should be <]uite at home in modern office routine, in accounts kept by double entry, in the handling of large bodies of men, and in the application of modern machinery to all classes of engineering work. It will generally be found that those only can fill this position successfully who make completeness of work their chief and absorbing aim. The manager should bear the reputation of being firm, and at the same time absolutely impartial to everybody under his charge, from his office boy upwards. He should always be ready to learn from anyone, and, in whatever work he may have in hand, should adopt the latest processes and methods, and carry them out in the most efficient manner. If he has to erect a new factory, he should think out every detail before he commences operations, and not wait for developments during the progress of the work. If he has no experience of his own to guide him, he should promptly seek the advice of those who have.Slater Lewis (1896, p. 8), cited in Urwick & Brech (1946, p. 82–83)
Job and works order One special feature of Lewis's book was a clearer specification of the term "job", distinguishing the job and the works order. Church (1908) explained, this distinction made by Slater Lewis: