Nonshop Enterprise-Management Structure

a form of organization in the USSR of managing an industrial enterprise, under which the basic production subdivision of the enterprise is not a shop but a section; the section leadership functions are performed directly by the administrative apparatus of the enterprise. The nonshop structure is one of the progressive trends in the improvement of the organization of management of small and medium enterprises. With the transition from a three-level system of management of an enterprise (enterprise-shop-section) to a two-level system (enterprise-section), all the principal functions of management are centralized in the managerial departments of the enterprise: technical preparation of production, planning, accounting, and so on. There is a significant change in the character of the technical department’s activity—it coordinates all the technical work of the sections. There is an increase in the role of the foreman at the section in the introduction of new machinery and an increase in the responsibility of technologists and designers for the technical condition of production and the introduction of new types of output and more advanced technology. The planning and production department of the enterprise gets an opportunity to guide production directly (without an intermediary unit) by way of section foremen. The content and character of the production plan change. There is an increase in the role of the production-control service of the enterprise and its importance in the operational regulation of production; it bears full responsibility for providing all production sections with the necessary raw and other materials, engineering equipment, and so on. There is a rise in the role and importance of the service for organizing labor, wages, and worker cadres; it is entrusted with the planning of labor and wages for each production section, devising wage systems, and setting norms for new technological processes, as well as current norm-setting and making necessary corrections in existing norms. The department ensures the staffing of sections with manpower, the raising of qualifications of cadres, and so forth. Accounting is centralized in the managerial apparatus of the enterprise. Accounting documentation and the number of accounting and computing personnel are reduced.

In the conditions of a nonshop structure, a section is headed by a foreman, who operates on the basis of one-man authority. Under his authority, besides workers, are usually a production controller and an inspector. The foreman bears a responsibility for production in all indexes and participates in the resolution of practically all questions of the activity of sections involving a change in the production plan, the selection and transfer of workers, and the establishment and changing of output norms, wage-rate grades, and other questions.

In the transition to a nonshop structure, the managerial departments of the enterprise have the opportunity to guide production directly; duplication in the work of the administrative apparatus of shops and departments is eliminated; outlays for maintaining the administrative apparatus are reduced; the possibility of wider unification and simplification of planning, operational, and reporting documents appears; document turnover is reduced substantially; the procedure of preparing, examining, and approving technical and planning documentation is simplified; and questions are resolved more efficiently.

The Council of Ministers of the USSR, by its resolution of Nov. 6, 1958, “On the Introduction of a Nonshop Structure of Production Management at Industrial Enterprises,” approved the experimental change to a nonshop structure by a number of plants and factories in various industries.