I say, "You're telling me we're saving four minutes per part. Doesn't that mean we're producing more parts per hour than we were? How come we've got so much inventory stacked up for this thing?"
"With the old way, we had more machines," he says. "We had two of the first type, five of the second type, and three of the third type."
I nod, understanding now. "So you could do more parts, en though it took you longer per part. Then why did we buy e NCX-10?"
"Each of the other machines had to have a machinist to run
Bob says. "The NCX-10 only needs two guys on it for setups.,e I said, it's the lowest cost way for us to produce these parts."
I take a slow walk all the way around the machine.
"We do run this thing three shifts, don't we?" I ask Bob.
"Well, we just started to again. It took a while to find a re-
placement for Tony, the setup guy on third shift who quit."
"Oh, yeah..." I say. Man, Peach really did it to us that day. I ask, "Bob, how long does it take to train new people on this machine?"
"About six months," he says.
I shake my head.
"That's a big part of the problem, Al. We train somebody and after a couple of years they can go elsewhere and make a few
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dollars more with somebody else," says Bob. "And we can't seem to attract anybody good with the wages we offer."
"Well why don't we pay more for people on this equipment?"
"The union," says Bob. "We'd get complaints, and the union would want us to up the pay-grade for all the setup people."
I take a last look.
"Okay, so much for this," I say.
But that isn't all. The two of us walk to the other side of the plant where Bob gives me a second introduction.
"Meet Herbie Number Two: the heat-treat department," says Bob.
This one looks more like what you might think of in terms of an industrial Herbie. It's dirty. It's hot. It's ugly. It's dull. And it's indispensable.
Heat- treat basically is a pair of furnaces... a couple of grimy, dingy, steel boxes, the insides of which are lined with ce-ramic blocks. Gas burners raise the internal temperatures to the 1500-degree-Fahrenheit range.
Certain parts, after they've been machined or cold-worked or whatever at ordinary temperatures, can't be worked on any- more until they've been treated with heat for an extended period of time. Most often, we need to soften the metal, which becomes very hard and brittle during processing, so it can have more machining done to it.
So the furnace operators put in the parts, from a dozen or less to a couple of hundred, then they fire up the thing and cook the parts in there for a long time-anywhere from six hours to sixteen hours. And afterwards, the parts always have to go through a further cool-down to air temperature outside the fur- nace. We lose a lot of time on this process.
"What's the problem here-we need bigger furnaces?" I ask.
Bob says, "Well... yes and no. Most of the time these fur- naces are running half empty."
"How come?"
"It's the expediters who seem to cause the problem," he says. "They're always running over here and having us run five of this part or a dozen of that part just so they can have enough to assemble a shipment. So we end up having fifty parts wait while we heat-treat a handful. I mean, this operation is run like a bar- bershop-take a number and stand in line."
"So we're not running full batches."
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"Yeah, sometimes we are. But sometimes even if we do a full batch in number, it's not enough to fill the furnace."
"The batches are too small?"
"Or too big in size, and we have to run a second heat to handle the pieces that wouldn't fit in the first. It just never seems to work out," says Bob. "You know, a couple of years ago, there was a proposal to add a third furnace, on account of the prob- lems."
"What happened to it?"
"It was killed at the division level. They wouldn't authorize the funds because of low efficiencies. They told us to use the capacity we've got. Then maybe they'd talk expansion. Besides, there was all kinds of noise about how we've got to save energy and how another furnace would burn twice as much fuel and all that."
"Okay, but if we filled the furnace every time, would we have enough capacity to meet demand?" I ask.
Bob laughs.
"I don't know. We've never done it that way before."
Once upon a time, I had an idea for doing to the plant essen- tially what I did with the boys on the hike. I thought the best thing to do would be to reorganize everything so the resource with the least capacity would be first in the routings. All other resources would have gradual increases in capacity to make up for the statistical fluctuations passed on through dependency.
Well, the staff and I meet right after Bob and I get back to the office, and it's pretty obvious, awfully damn quick, that my grand plan for the perfect un balanced plant with Herbie in front is just not going to fly.
"From a production standpoint, we can't do it," says Stacey.
"There is just no way we can move even one Herbie-let alone two-to the front of production," Bob says. "The sequence of operations has to stay the way it is. There's nothing we can do about it."
"Okay, I already can see that," I say.
"We're stuck with a set of dependent events," says Lou.
As I listen to them, I get that old familiar feeling which j anes whenever a lot of work and energy are about to go down the tubes. It's kind of like watching a tire go flat.
I say, "Okay, if we can't do anything to change their position
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in the sequence, then maybe we can increase their capacities. We'll make them into non-bottlenecks."
Stacey asks, "But what about the step-up in capacity from beginning to end?"
"We'll reorganize... we'll decrease capacity at the head of production and increase it each stage on through," I suggest.
"Al, we're not just talking about moving people around. How can we add capacity without adding equipment?" asks Bob. "And if we're talking about equipment, we're getting ourselves into some major capital. A second furnace on heat-treat, and possibly a second n/c machine... brother, you're talking megabucks."
"The bottom line," says Lou, "is that we don't have the money. If we think we can go to Peach and ask him for excess capacity for a plant that currently isn't making money in the mid- dle of one of the worst years in the company's history... well, excuse my French, but we're out of our goddamned minds."
My mother and the kids and I are having dinner that eve- ning when Mom says to me, "Aren't you going to eat your peas, Alex?"
I tell her, "Mom, I'm an adult now. It's my option whether or not to eat my peas."
She looks hurt.
I say, "Sorry. I'm a little depressed tonight."
"What's wrong, Dad?" asks Davey.
"Well... it's kind of complicated," I say. "Let's just finish dinner. I've got to leave for the airport in a few minutes."
"Are you going away?" asks Sharon.
"No, I'm just going to pick up somebody," I say.
"Is it Mommy?" asks Sharon.
"No, not Mommy. I wish it could be."
"Alex, tell your children what's bothering you," says my mother. "It affects them, too."
I look at the kids and realize my mother's right. I say, "We found out we've got some problems at the plant which we might not be able to solve."
"What about the man you called?" she asks. "Can't you talk to him?"
"You mean Jonah? That's who I'm picking up at the air- port," I say. "But I'm not sure even Jonah's help will do any good."