By the time I get both kids to school and myself to work, it's past nine o'clock. As I walk in, Fran waves a message slip at me. I grab it and read it. It's from Hilton Smyth, marked "urgent" and double underlined.
I call him.
"Well, it's about time," says Hilton. "I tried to reach you an hour ago."
I roll my eyes. "What's the problem, Hilton?"
"Your people are sitting on a hundred sub-assemblies I need," says Smyth.
"Hilton, we're not sitting on anything," I say.
He raises his voice. "Then why aren't they here? I've got a customer order we can't ship because your people dropped the ball!"
"Just give me the particulars, and I'll have somebody look into it," I tell him.
He gives some reference numbers and I write them down.
"Okay, I'll have somebody get back to you."
"You'd better do more than that, pal," says Hilton. "You'd better make sure we get those sub-assemblies by the end of the day-and I mean all 100 pieces, not 87, not 99, but all of them. Because I'm not going to have my people do two setups for final assembly on account of your lateness."
"Look, we'll do our best," I tell him, "but I'm not going to make promises."
"Oh? Well, let's just put it this way," he says. "If we don't get 100 sub-assemblies from you today, I'm talking to Peach. And from what I hear you're in enough trouble with him already."
"Listen, pal, my status with Bill Peach is none of your damn business," I tell him. "What makes you think you can threaten me?"
The pause is so long I think he's going to hang up on me. Then he says, "Maybe you ought to read your mail." "What do you mean by that?" I can hear him smiling.
"Just get me the sub-assemblies by the end of the day," he says sweetly. "Bye-bye."
I hang up.
"Weird," I mumble.
I talk to Fran. She calls Bob Donovan for me and then noti- fies the staff that there will be a meeting at ten o'clock. Donovan comes in and I ask him to have an expediter see what's holding up the job for Smyth's plant. Almost gritting my teeth as I say it, I tell him to make sure the sub-assemblies go out today. After he's gone, I try to forget about the call, but I can't. Finally, I go ask Fran if anything has come in recently that mentions Hilton Smyth. She thinks for a minute, then reaches for a folder.
"This memo just came in on Friday," she says. "It looks like Mr. Smyth got a promotion."
I take the memo she hands me. It's from Bill Peach. It's an announcement that he's named Smyth to the newly-created posi- tion of division productivity manager. The appointment is effec- tive at the end of this week. The job description says that all plant managers will now report on a dotted line to Smyth, who will "give special attention to manufacturing-productivity improve- ment with emphasis on cost reduction."
And I start to sing, "Oh, what a beautiful morning...!"
Whatever enthusiasm I expected from the staff with regard to my education over the weekend... well, I don't get it. Maybe I thought all I had to do was walk in and open my mouth to reveal my discoveries, and they'd all be instantly converted by the obvious Tightness. But it doesn't work that way. We-Lou, Bob, Stacey, and Ralph Nakamura, who runs data processing for the plant-are in the conference room. I'm standing in front next to an easel which holds a big pad of paper, sheet after sheet of which is covered with little diagrams I've drawn during my expla- nations. I've invested a couple of hours in making those explana- tions. But now it's almost time for lunch, and they're all just sit- ting there unimpressed.
Looking down the table at the faces looking back at me, I can see they don't know what to make of what I've told them. Okay, I think I see a faint glimmer of understanding in Stacey's eyes. Bob Donovan is on the fence; he seems to have intuitively grasped some of it. Ralph is not sure what it is I'm really saying. And Lou is frowning at me. One sympathizer, one undecided, one bewil- dered, and one skeptic.
"Okay, what's the problem?" I ask.
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They glance at each other .
"Come on," I say. "This is like I just proved two and two equals four and you don't believe me." I look straight at Lou. "What's the problem you're having?"
Lou sits back and shakes his head. "I don't know, Al. It's just that... well, you said how you figured this out by watching a bunch of kids on a hike in the woods."
"So what's wrong with that?"
"Nothing. But how do you know these things are really go- ing on out there in the plant?"
I flip back a few sheets on the easel until I find the one with the names of Jonah's two phenomena written on it.
"Look at this: do we have statistical fluctuations in our opera- tions?" I ask, pointing to the words.
"Yes, we do," he says.
"And do we have dependent events in our plant?" I ask.
"Yes," he says again.
"Then what I've told you has to be right," I say.
"Now hold on a minute," says Bob. "Robots don't have statis- tical fluctuations. They always work at the same pace. That's one of the reasons we bought the damn things-consistency. And I thought the main reason you went to see this Jonah guy was to find out what to do about the robots."
"It's okay to say that fluctuations in cycle time for a robot would be almost flat while it was working," I tell him. "But we're not dealing just with a robotic operation. Our other operations do have both phenomena. And, remember, the goal isn't to make the robots productive; it's to make the whole system productive. Isn't that right, Lou?"
"Well, Bob may have a point. We've got a lot of automated equipment out there, and the process times ought to be fairly consistent," says Lou.
Stacey turns to him. "But what he's saying-"
Just then the conference room door opens. Fred, one of our expeditors, puts his head into the room and looks at Bob Dono- van.
"May I see you for a second?" he asks Bob. "It's about the job for Hilton Smyth."
Bob stands up to leave the room, but I tell Fred to come in. Like it or not, I have to be interested in what's happening on this "crisis" for Hilton Smyth. Fred explains that the job has to go
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through two more departments before the sub-assemblies are complete and ready for shipment.
"Can we get them out today?" I ask.
"It's going to be close, but we can try," says Fred. "The truck shuttle leaves at five o'clock."
The shuttle is a private trucking service that all the plants in the division use to move parts back and forth.
"Five o'clock is the last run of the day that we can use to reach Smyth's plant," says Bob. "If we don't make that trip, the next shuttle won't be until tomorrow afternoon."
"What has to be done?" I ask.
"Peter Schnell's department has to do some fabricating. Then the pieces have to be welded," says Fred. "We're going to set up one of the robots to do the welds."
"Ah, yes, the robots," I say. "You think we can do it?"
"According to the quotas, Pete's people are supposed to give us the parts for twenty-five units every hour," says Fred. "And I know the robot is capable of welding twenty-five units of this sub- assembly per hour."
Bob asks about moving the pieces to the robot. In a normal situation, the pieces finished by Pete's people probably would be moved to the robot only once a day, or maybe not until the entire batch was finished. We can't wait that long. The robot has to begin its work as soon as possible.
"I'll make arrangements to have a materials handler stop at Pete's department every hour on the hour," says Fred.
"Okay," says Bob. "How soon can Pete start?"
Fred says, "Pete can start on the job at noon, so we've got five hours."
"You know that Pete's people quit at four," says Bob.