have been getting to final assembly faster. It's as if we've created
an "express lane" through the plant for bottleneck parts.
After putting Q.C. in front of the bottlenecks, we discovered
that about five percent of the parts going into the NCX-10 and
about seven percent going into heat-treat did not conform to
quality requirements. If those percentages hold true in the fu-
ture, we'll effectively have gained that time for additional
throughput.
The new policy of having people cover the bottlenecks on
lunch breaks has also gone into effect. We're not sure how much
we've gained from that, because we didn't know how much we
were losing before. At least we're doing the right thing now. But I
have heard reports that from time to time the NCX-10 is idle—
and it happens when there is nobody on break. Donovan is sup-
posed to be looking into the causes.
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The combination of these has allowed us to ship our most
critical orders and to ship a few more of them than normal. But I
know we're not going fast enough. A few weeks ago we were
limping along; now we're walking, but we ought to be jogging.
Glancing back toward the monitor, I see the eyes are upon
me.
"Listen ... I know we've taken a step in the right direc-
tion," I explain. "But we have to accelerate the progress. It's
good that we got twelve shipments out last week. But we're still
having some customer orders become past due. It's not as many,
I'll grant you, but we still have to do better. We really shouldn't
have any late orders."
Everyone walks away from the computer and joins me around
the table. Bob Donovan starts telling me how they're planning
some refinements on what we've already done.
I say, "Bob, those are fine, but they're minor. How are we
coming on the other suggestions Jonah made?"
Bob glances away.
"Well . . . we're looking into them," he says.
I say, "I want recommendations on offloading the bottle-
necks ready for our Wednesday staff meeting."
Bob nods, but says nothing.
"You'll have them for us?" I ask.
"Whatever it takes," he says.
That afternoon in my office, I have a meeting with Elroy
Langston, our Q.C. manager, and Barbara Penn, who handles
employee communications. Barbara writes the newsletters, which
are now explaining the background and reasons for the changes
taking place in the plant. Last week, we distributed the first issue.
I put her together with Langston to have her work on a new
project.
After parts exit the bottlenecks, they often tend to look al-
most identical to the parts going into the bottlenecks. Only a close examination by a trained eye will detect the difference in some
cases. The problem is how to make it easy for the employee to tell
the two apart . . . and to make it possible for the employee to
treat the post-bottleneck parts so more of them make it to assem-
bly and are shipped as quality products. Langston and Penn are
in my office to talk about what they've come up with.
"We already have the red tags," says Penn. "So that tells us E.M. Goldratt
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the part is on a bottleneck routing. What we need is a simple way
to show people the parts they need to treat with special attention
—the ones they need to treat like gold."
"That's a suitable comparison," I tell her.
She says, "So what if we simply mark the tags with pieces of
yellow tape after the parts are finished by the bottlenecks. The
tape would tell people on sight that these are the parts you treat
like gold. In conjunction with this, I'll do an internal promotion
to spread the word about what the tape means. For media, we
might use some sort of bulletin board poster, an announcement
that the foremen would read to the hourly people, maybe a ban-
ner which would hang in the plant—those kinds of things."
"As long as the tape can be added without slowing down the
bottlenecks, that sounds fine," I say.
"I'm sure we can find a way to do it so it doesn't interfere,"
says Langston.
"Good," I say. "One other concern of mine is that I don't
want this to be just a lot of promotion."
"That's perfectly understood," says Langston with a smile.
"Right now, we're systematically identifying the causes of quality
problems on the bottlenecks and in subsequent processing. Once
we know where to aim, we'll be having specific procedures devel-
oped for bottleneck-routed parts and processes. And once they're
established, we'll set up training sessions so people can learn
those procedures. But that's obviously going to take some time.
For the short term, we're specifying that the existing procedures
be double-checked for accuracy on the bottleneck routes."
We talk that over for a few minutes, but basically all of it
seems sound to me. I tell them to proceed full speed and to keep
me informed of what's happening.
"Nice job," I say to both of them as they stand up to leave.
"By the way, Roy, I thought Bob Donovan was going to sit in on
this meeting."
"That man is hard to catch these days," says Langston. "But I'll brief him on what we talked about."
Just then, the phone rings. Reaching with one hand to an-
swer it, I wave to Langston and Penn with the other as they walk
out the door.
"Hi, this is Donovan."
"It's too late to call in sick," I tell him. "Don't you know you just missed a meeting?"
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That doesn't faze him.
"Al, have I got something to show you!" says Bob. "Got time to take a little walk?"
"Yeah, I guess so. What's this all about?"
"Well . . . I'll tell you when you get here," says Bob. "Meet me on the receiving dock."
I walk down to the dock, where I see Bob; he's standing
there waving to me as if I might miss him. Which would be im-
possible. There is a flat-bed truck backed up to the dock, and in
the middle of the bed is a large object on a skid. The object is
covered by a gray canvas tarp which has ropes tying it down. A
couple of guys are working with an overhead crane to move the
thing off of the truck. They're raising it into the air as I walk up
to Bob. He cups his hands around his mouth.
"Easy there," Bob calls as he watches the big gray thing sway
back and forth.
Slowly, the crane maneuvers the cargo back from the truck
and lowers it safely to the concrete floor. The workers release the
hoist chains. Bob walks over and has them untie the ropes hold-
ing down the canvas.
"We'll have it off in a minute," Bob assures me.
I stand there patiently, but Bob can't refrain from helping.
When all the ropes are untied, Donovan takes h
old of the tarp
and, with a flair of gusto, flings it off of what it's concealing.
"Ta-da!" he says as he stands back and gestures to what has
to be one of the oldest pieces of equipment I've ever seen.
"What the hell is it?" I ask.
"It's a Zmegma," he says.
He takes a rag and wipes off some of the grime.
"They don't build 'em like this anymore," he says.
"I'm very glad to hear that," I say.
"Al," he says, "the Zmegma is just the machine we need!"
"That looks like it might have been state-of-the-art for 1942.
How's it going to help us?"
"Well ... I admit it ain't no match for the NCX-10. But if
you take this baby right here," he says patting the Zmegma, "and one of those Screwmeisters over there," he says pointing across
the way, "and that other machine off in the corner, together they
can do all the things the NCX-10 can do."
I glance around at the different machines. All of them are
old and idle. I step closer to the Zmegma to look it over.
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"So this must be one of the machines you told Jonah we sold
to make way for the inventory holding pen," I say.
"You got it," he says.
"It's practically an antique. All of them are," I say, referring to the other machines. "Are you sure they can give us acceptable
quality?"
"It isn't automated equipment, so with human error we
might have a few more mistakes," says Bob. "But if you want capacity, this is a quick way to get it."
I smile. "It's looking better and better. Where did you find
this thing?"
"I called a buddy of mine this morning up at our South End
plant," he says. "He told me he still had a couple of these sitting around and he'd have no problem parting with one of them. So I
grabbed a guy from maintenance and we took a ride up to have a
look."
I ask him, "What did it cost us?"
"The rental fee on the truck to haul it down here," says Bob.
"The guy at South End told us just to go ahead and take it. He'll
write it off as scrap. With all the paperwork he'd have to do, it
was too much trouble to sell it to us."
"Does it still work?"
"It did before we left," says Bob. "Let's find out."
The maintenance man connects the power cable to an outlet
on a nearby steel column. Bob reaches for the power switch and
hits the ON button. For a second, nothing happens. Then we
hear the slow, gathering whirr from somewhere in the guts of the
old machine. Poofs of dust blow out of the antique fan housing.
Bob turns to me with a dumb grin on his big face.
"Guess we're in business," he says.
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23
Rain is beating at the windows of my office. Outside, the
world is gray and blurred. It's the middle of a middle-of-the-week
morning. In front of me are some so-called "Productivity Bulle-
tins" put out by Hilton Smyth which I've come across in my in-
basket. I haven't been able to make myself read past the first
paragraph of the one on top. Instead, I'm gazing at the rain and
pondering the situation with my wife.
Julie and I went out on our "date" that Saturday night, and
we actually had a good time. It was nothing exotic. We went to a
movie, we got a bite to eat afterwards, and for the heck of it we
took a drive through the park on the way home. Very tame. But it
was exactly what we needed. It was good just to relax with her. I admit that at first I felt kind of like we were back in high school or
something. But, after a while, I decided that wasn't such a bad
feeling. I brought her back to her parents at two in the morning,
and we made out in the driveway until her old man turned on
the porch light.
Since that night, we've continued to see each other. A couple
of times last week, I made the drive up to see her. Once, we met
halfway at a restaurant. I've been dragging myself to work in the
morning, but with no complaints. We've had fun together.
By some unspoken agreement, neither of us talk about di-
vorce or marriage. The subject has only come up once, which
happened when we talked about the kids and agreed they should
stay with Julie and her folks as soon as school ends. I tried then to
push us into some answers, but the old argument syndrome be-
gan to brew quickly, and I backed off to preserve the peace.
It's a strange state of limbo we're in. It almost feels the way it
did before we got married and "settled down." Only now, we're
both quite familiar to each other. And there is this storm which
has gone south for a while, but which is sure to swing back some-
day.
A soft tap at the door interrupts this meditation. I see Fran's
face peeking around the edge of the door.
"Ted Spencer is outside," she says. "He says he needs to talk to you about something."
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"What about?"
Fran steps into the office and closes the door behind her. She
quickly comes over to my desk and whispers to me.
"I don't know, but I heard on the grapevine that he had an
argument with Ralph Nakamura about an hour ago," she says.
"Oh," I say. "Okay, thanks for the warning. Send him in."
A moment later Ted Spencer comes in. He looks mad. I ask
him what's happening down in heat-treat.
He says, "Al, you've got to get that computer guy off my
back."
"You mean Ralph? What have you got against him?"
"He's trying to turn me into some kind of clerk or some-
thing," says Ted. "He's been coming around and asking all kinds
of dumb questions. Now he wants me to keep some kind of spe-
cial records on what happens in heat-treat."
"What kind of records?" I ask.
"I don't know ... he wants me to keep a detailed log of
everything that goes in and out of the furnaces . . . the times we
put 'em in, the times we take 'em out, how much time between
heats, all that stuff," says Ted. "And I've got too much to do to be bothered with all that. In addition to heat-treat, I've got three
other work centers I'm responsible for."
"Why does he want this time log?" I ask.
"How should I know? I mean, we've already got enough
paperwork to satisfy anybody, as far as I'm concerned," says Ted.
"I think Ralph just wants to play games with numbers. If he's got
the time for it, then fine, let him do it in his own department. I've
got the productivity of my department to worry about."
Wanting to end this, I nod to him. "Okay, I hear you. Let me
look into it."
"Will you keep him out of my area?" asks Ted.
"I'll let you know, Ted."
After he's gone, I have Fran track down Ralph Nakamura for
me. What's puzzling me is that Ralph is not what you'd call an
abrasive person, and yet he sure seems to have made Ted very
/>
upset.
"You wanted to see me?" asks Ralph from the door.
"Yeah, come on in and sit down," I say to him.
He seats himself in front of my desk.
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"So tell me what you did to light Ted Spencer's fuse," I say to
him.
Ralph rolls his eyes and says, "All I wanted from him was to
keep an accurate record of the actual times for each heat of parts
in the furnace. I thought it was a simple enough request."
"What prompted you to ask him?"
"I had a couple of reasons," says Ralph. "One of them is that the data we have on heat-treat seems to be very inaccurate. And if
what you say is true, that this operation is so vital to the plant,
then it seems to me we ought to have valid statistics on it."
"What makes you think our data is so inaccurate?" I ask.
"Because after I saw the total on last week's shipments I was
kind of bothered by something. A few days ago on my own, I did
some projections of how many shipments we would actually be
able to make last week based on the output of parts from the
bottlenecks. According to those projections, we should have been
able to do about eighteen to twenty shipments instead of twelve.
The projections were so far off that I figured at first I must have
made a big mistake. So I took a closer look, double-checked my
math and couldn't find anything wrong. Then I saw that the
estimates for the NCX-10 were within the ballpark. But for heat-
treat, there was a big difference."
"And that's what made you think that the data base must be
in error," I say.
"Right," he says. "So I went down to talk to Spencer. And,
ah. . . ."
"And what?"
"Well, I noticed some funny things were happening," he
says. "He was kind of tight-lipped when I started asking him
questions. Finally, I just happened to ask him when the parts that
were being treated in the furnace at the moment were going to be
finished. I thought I'd get a time on an actual heat by myself, just
to see if we were close to the standard. He said the parts could
come out at around 3 P.M. So I went away, and came back at
three. But nobody was around. I waited for about ten minutes,
then went to look for Ted. When I found him, he said he had the
furnace helpers working somewhere else and they'd get around
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