For this reason the original curve cards should be filed by departments so that the complete history of any department may be had from the cards behind the guide card for that department. A large portion of the executive's work, however, involves the study of his general business not by departments but by functions. For instance, the executive may wish to know how many employees he has in his whole business, and how many employees there are in each department, if he is considering the departmental increases or decreases which afl^ect the total payroll. It is therefore desirable that the executive should have available for instant reference a crossindex of information which will show his whole business by function instead of by department. Such a cross-index can easily be provided, when curve cards are used, by taking a blue print of each curve card and then filing the blue print by function, instead of by department. In such an arrangement, there would be a complete set of guide cards giving different headings, such as "Number of Employees", "Total Sales", "Total Expenses", etc., with guide cards having suitable subheadings placed behind each one of the main guide cards. A blue print of the curve showing the total number of employees in the corporation would be filed at the front of the division for employees. Back of

RECORDS FOR THE EXECUTIVE

this total card would be filed blue prints showing the employees in each department of the whole plant. Thus, if a total card at the front showed that the employees were increasing, the manager could refer to each one of the department cards filed immediately back of the total card to see in just which departments there had been an increase during the last month, and in which department there had been a decrease.