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
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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 hold 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.
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.