Excerpt from Reducing Costs of Handling and Hauling Live Chickens From Farms to Processing PlantsThe original data, taken at a particular point in time, provides a cross section of an industry in transition. By standardizing size and some other factors, the present industry is translated into a set of simplified models representing completed stages rather than a mixture of firms in all stages of transition. This is done to facilitate study of the effects of a continued movement toward fewer, larger, and more highly integrated firms. First, given a supply of specified quality, quantity, and geographical location, how could assembly costs be minimized if a number of firms of discrete sizes and types constituted the alternatives? Secondly, if a firm.of particular size and type was able to overcome institutionalized restrictions and change to another size and type, what would the results be in terms of costs?While the study on which this report is based involved New England assembly firms, their technology and operating practices are comparable to those in other areas. Thus, cost relationships determined among firms of different capacities should have general applicability. Inefficiencies in the present assembly sys tem in New England result both from practices of individual firms and from structural features of the industry. Other areas have similar problems. There fore, the potential savings available within New England, as shown in this study, may also be possible for the industry in other areas.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.