How do you rate in the manpower productivity leaque?

Which British industries make the most effective use of manpower and equipment? How does your industry compare with others? Every company that takes manpower planning seriously should know the answers to these questions, yet surprisingly few people look at the right kind of figures. Within any one industry it is possible to make comparisons of output per man‐hour between different companies or different plants. But even these simple comparisons are fraught with danger if they concentrate on shopfloor labour and ignore the indirect workers and staff who all contribute to the final output. Comparisons between different industries are complicated by the problem of comparing, say, a tonne of steel with a motor vehicle, a suit of clothes, a chair, a ship or what have you. And companies are notoriously reluctant to release their own figures, though intrigued to know how well other people are doing. Fortunately, there is a reliable source of information that can supply the answers to the vital questions about manpower productivity. The Census of Production collects information from companies in all manufacturing industries and publishes the data in a series of reports. At one time, the census data came out too late to be of more than academic use (the 1963 figures finally emerged in 1968) but, thanks to computers, the data now emerge in provisional form within a year. What do the figures show, and how can manpower planners make use of the data?