Quite a number of contributions in this forum have dealt with the question of how German armament production during WW II could have been boosted. If I remember correctly they have focused on three main issues so far: 1. Getting a larger workforce (not starving Soviet POWs to death, not murdering the Jews, integrating more women into the workforce) 2. Introducing longer working hours earlier 3. Increase production of effective weapons at the expense of ineffective ones.
While these measures would probably indeed have increased production, there are others, which have to do with using the available manhours more effectively, rather than increasing the number of people in the workforce or the number of hours they work. Here are just three possible measures, which of course could be combined with the measures, described earlier, that increase the available manhours:
1. Abolishing the Reichsarbeitsdienst (labour service). The Reichsarbeitsdienst was founded before the Nazis came to power to give work to as many unemployment people as possible and was made mandatory only by the Nazis. It was originally not planned to employ these people as efficiently as possible. It used manual tools such as shovels and pickaxes to a degree that was high even for the times. It was seen as ineffective even by contemporary critics.
2. Payment for weapons should encourage efficient use of resources. At least at the time when General Thomas was in charge of the German armament industry, the payment for weapons actively increased waste of resources. This was because the armament firms always received an amount of money that covered their expenses plus a certain percentage of those expenses, fixed by the armed forces, as a profit margin. The greater their expenses were, the greater became their profits, since the profits always constituted the same percentage of expenses.
3. Weapons purchases should follow a strict value for money for money policy. In OTL many firms were chosen as suppliers not because they offered the best or cheapest goods, but because the Army wanted to avoid unemployment in a certain area, or because it wanted to strengthen small firms as competitors to big ones.
More ideas welcome.