I put my arm around her.
"For starters, that sounds worth shooting for," I tell her. "Look, it's probably easier said than done, but I can certainly try to keep from taking you for granted. I'd like you to come home, but unfortunately, the pressures that caused all the problems are still going to be there. They're just not going to go away. I can't ignore my job."
"I've never asked you to," she says. "Just don't ignore me or the kids. And I'll really try to understand your work."
I smile.
"You remember a long time ago, after we got married and we both had jobs, how we'd come home and just talk to each other for a couple of hours, and sympathize with each other about the trials and tribulations we'd suffered during the day?" I ask. "That was nice."
"But then there were babies," says Julie. "And, later, you started putting in extra hours at work."
"Yeah, we got out of the habit," I tell her. "What do you say we make a point to do that again?"
"That sounds terrific," she says. "Look, Al, I know that leav-
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ing you must have seemed selfish on my part. I just went crazy for a little while. I'm sorry-
"No, you don't have to be sorry," I tell her. "I should have been paying attention."
"But I'll try to make it up to you," she says. Then she smiles briefly and adds, "Since we're walking down memory lane, maybe you remember the first fight we had, how we promised afterwards we'd always try to look at a situation from the other's point of view as well as our own. Well, I think for the past couple of years we haven't been doing that very often. I'm willing to try it again if you are."
"I am too," I say.
There is a long hug.
"So... you want to get married?" I ask her.
She leans back in my arms and says, "I'll try anything twice."
"You know, don't you, it's not going to be perfect," I tell her. "You know we're still going to have fights."
"And I'll probably be selfish about you from time to time," she says.
"What the hell," I tell her, "Let's go to Vegas and find a justice of the peace."
She laughs, "Are you serious?"
"Well, I can't go tonight," I say. "I've got that meeting in the morning. How about tomorrow night?"
"You are serious!"
"All I've been doing since you left is putting my paycheck in the bank. After tomorrow it'll definitely be time to blow some of it."
Julie smiles. "Okay, big spender. Let's do it."
The next morning on the fifteenth floor of the UniCo build- ing, I walk into the conference room at a few minutes before ten o'clock. Sitting at the far end of the long table is Hilton Smyth and sitting next to him is Neil Cravitz. Flanking them are various staff people.
I say, "Good morning."
Hilton looks up at me without a smile and says, "If you close the door, we can begin."
"Wait a minute. Bill Peach isn't here yet," I say. "We're going to wait for him, aren't we?"
"Bill's not coming. He's involved in some negotiations," says Smyth.
"Then I would like this review to be postponed until he's available," I tell him.
Smyth's eyes get steely.
"Bill specifically told me to conduct this and to pass along my recommendation to him," says Smyth. "So if you want to make a case for your plant, I suggest you get started. Otherwise, we'll have to draw our own conclusions from your report. And with that increase in cost of products Neil has told me about, it sounds to me as if you have a little explaining to do. I, for one, would particularly like to know why you are not observing proper pro- cedures for determining economical batch quantities."
I pace in front of them a moment before answering. The fuse to my anger has started a slow burn. I try to put it out and think about what this means. I don't like the situation one bit. Peach damn well ought to be here. And I was expecting to be making my presentation to Frost, not his assistant. But from the sound of it, Hilton may have set himself up with Peach to be my judge, jury, and possibly, executioner. I decide the safest bet is to talk.
"Fine," I say finally. "But before I go into my presentation of what has been happening at my plant, let me ask you a question. Is it the goal of the UniWare Division to reduce costs?"
"Of course it is," says Hilton impatiently.
"No, actually, that is not the goal," I tell them. "The goal of UniWare is to make money. Agreed?"
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Cravitz sits up in his chair and says, "That's true."
Hilton gives me a tentative nod.
I say, "I'm going to demonstrate to you that regardless of what our costs look like according to standard measurements, my plant has never been in a better position to make money."
And so it begins.
An hour and a half later, I'm midway through an explana- tion of the effects of the bottlenecks upon inventory and throughput when Hilton stops me.
"Okay, you've taken a lot of time to tell us all this, and I personally can't see the significance," says Hilton. "Maybe at your plant you did have a couple of bottlenecks and you discovered what they were. Well, I mean bravo and all that, but when I was a plant manager we dealt with bottlenecks wandering everywhere."
"Hilton, we're dealing with fundamental assumptions that are wrong," I tell him.
"I can't see that you're dealing with anything fundamental," says Hilton. "It's at best simple common sense, and I'm being charitable at that."
"No, it's more than just common sense. Because we're doing things every day that are in direct contradiction to the established rules most people use in manufacturing," I tell him.
"Such as?" asks Cravitz.
"According to the cost-accounting rules that everybody has used in the past, we're supposed to balance capacity with demand first, then try to maintain the flow," I say. "But instead we shouldn't be trying to balance capacity at all; we need excess ca- pacity. The rule we should be following is to balance the/ low with demand, not the capacity.
"Two, the incentives we usually offer are based on the as- sumption that the level of utilization of any worker is determined by his own potential," I tell them. "That's totally false because of dependency. For any resource that is not a bottleneck, the level of activity from which the system is able to profit is not determined by its individual potential but by some other constraint within the system."
Hilton says impatiently, "What's the difference? When some- body is working, we're getting use out of him."
"No, and that's a third assumption that's wrong," I say.
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"We've assumed that utilization and activation are the same. Acti- vating a resource and utilizing a resource are not synonymous."
And the argument goes on.
/ say an hour lost at a bottleneck is an hour out of the entire system. Hilton says an hour lost at a bottleneck is just an hour lost of that resource.
I say an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is worthless. Hilton says an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is an hour saved at that resource.
"All this talk about bottlenecks," says Hilton. "Bottlenecks temporarily limit throughput. Maybe your plant is proof of that. But they have little impact upon inventory."
"It's completely the opposite, Hilton," I say. "Bottlenecks govern both throughput and inventory. And I'll tell you what my plant really has shown: it's proved our performance measure- ments are wrong."
Cravitz drops the pen he's holding and it rolls noisily on the table.