Master Planner's Plan

This week, just six weeks to the day after he moved in as master planner for the War Production Board, Ferdinand Eberstadt produced a master plan to get scarce materials to the right war factories in the right quantities at the right time.

As everyone had expected (TIME, Oct. 5) the new "Controlled Materials Plan" was in essence a scheme for vertical allocations--in contrast to the horizontal every-producer-for-himself setup that finally strangled its predecessor, the unlamented Production Requirements Plan ("Purp") in its own red tape. From top to bottom, the Controlled Materials Plan provides:

1) The Production Requirements Committee, which at last possesses the basic facts on the size of the scarce materials pie, will slice it into seven pieces--for Army, Navy, Maritime Commission, Lend-Lease, BEW, Civilian Supply and Charles Edward Wilson's new aircraft scheduling unit in WPB.

2) These agencies will slice their pieces into smaller ones for their prime contractors--who will already have consulted with WPB's materials branches on their total needs.

3) The prime contractors thereafter will dole out the materials that their own subcontractors need.

As contrasted with the production unbalance and "priorities inflation" that Purp and its predecessors brought about, the first great merit of CMP is that every part of a tank or gun or airplane will be assured of the same preferred position in the disbursement of scarce materials. Moreover, if changes in military strategy dictate a change in any armament program, a cutback or an increase can be applied with one fell swoop to an entire program.

The second great merit is that the CMP should enforce real programming (on a quarterly basis) all the way down from the Army, Navy et al to the lowest subcontractor, should halt hysterical overordering in advance of need induced by the old priorities systems.

Slow But Sure. But, though CMP is the new order of the day, it will take over the field gradually. First end-product to get the CMP treatment will be aircraft, first raw materials will be steel, copper and aluminum. Purp will still be used for "shelf good's" (like nuts and bolts and nails) where it has proved to be a simple and efficient means of scheduling.

One central problem remains: the gearing of war production to consumer-goods production, based on an overall minimum schedule of civilian needs. Ferd Eberstadt has been heckling Civilian Supply Boss Leon Henderson for just such a schedule for weeks, so far with a notable lack of success. But at least Planner Eberstadt now has a complete and sensible framework to fit a civilian-supply program into when one is finally evolved. "While this may not be the last plan," said he this week, "it is somewhere near the last. That is not because human ingenuity is limited but because human patience is limited."

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