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The Centralograph Used for ProductionControl of Punched Card MachinesL S O D E R B E R G , S V F N S K A E S S O AB, S T O C K H O L MUDC 654.937.2:681.177LME 865For many years the Centralograph has heen employed for supervising productionin different branches of industry such as ironworks, textile factories, etc.,where it has also heen a planning aid.More recently, the Centralograph has heen used in Punched Card Departmentsto ensure improved utilization of the often expensivemachines.In the autumn of 1958, Swedish Esso installed a Centralograph system. Inthis article the supervisor of the Punched Card Department describes theexperience gained.In order to be able to plan and improve the working processes in a PunchedCard Department, its supervisor must coordinate three factors: the operators,the machines, and the processes.Such coordination demands knowledge of several facts: machine occupationtime, number of jobs, and the operators' capacity.These facts are balanced against the volume of work and time factors. Ingeneral, the volume of work can be determined from experience without anyspecial difficulties. The problem has been to obtain the necessary time factorsin a way that is both simple and yet certain.When punched card machines were installed at Esso, a scheme for obtainingtime factors in the form of daily records of machine operations was created.Fig. IDiagram of Centralograph systemx 82ls127