1978 - Lessons Learned - Scheduling Resources

Two years after starting this job I decided to get out of music for reasons I may go into some other time. I decided to go into entertainment management but already had this job that was paying the bills. Going to a career specialist we looked at all of my experience and decided, with years of manufacturing experience, manufacturing would be a good fit until I found an entertainment position. He also told me two things that have stayed with me since: #1 “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”; #2 “Everyone gets in a rut. Choose your rut carefully.”
Easier said than done.

1978 – Lessons Learned – Scheduling Resources

“We’d like to offer you full-time employment,” Gene said, “but we’ll have to ask you to take a cut in pay. We can’t afford to pay you what the temp agency pays.”

I considered the reasons they had to offer me a position in the Shipping Department at Vernitron Control Components.

Consider: When I arrived at my temp assignment I was told they were weeks behind in shipments although the production-end of the business was delivering on time. The Operations Manager, Gene, informed me production problems had all been overcome at the cost of burying the shipping department and they would need some help for the next few weeks or until they caught up. He introduced me to my direct Supervisor, Rick, who took me to the department, where he graphically demonstrated the problem Gene had described.

We gingerly stepped around teetering stacks of open pallets of flattened packing cartons and toward an open doublewide door. We stepped through into a large room, about 25’ x 50’. The door we came through was in a long wall with the the remainder covered with bins all the way to the ceiling, organized for storing various sizes of flattened cartons. On the opposite wall an open window into final test was in the far corner with the department desk opposite the door. The parameter of the room was lined with 4’ x 8’ tables with a doublewide row of 3 of these tables down the center of the room. The far end revealed a window into the lunch area where stood 6 picnic tables.

The picnic tables and bench-seats were full of units awaiting shipment.

As was every table, bin and rolling cart available inside the department. Which, I was told, was how they had been for 4-months. They covered every table. Each bin was full. In some of the bins, supposed to be full of flattened packing cartons, flattened cartons were used to stack available units into multiple levels. 3-Rolling Carts and the desk were full of units and units were shoved under the tables under ¾’s of the tables along the walls. There were hundreds and hundreds of servos and syncros of every size sitting waiting packaging and shipment. They varied from 1.3” to 8” across and 2” to 10” tall. They were solid and heavy and a considerable number of these required special or mil-spec packaging. Some of this would require wrapping in soft-pac then bubble-wrap with desiccant inside a heat-sealed metal-foil bag, which was placed inside a folded box, or can and then inside a heaver carton. All levels from the bag-up required special markings, which were added in shipping.

The cartons not stacked in the hall were thrown haphazardly under the tables in the center of the room. If we needed a carton we searched until we found the right size. If we were out we looked on the pallets outside or ordered more and used whatever we could find for commercial shipments. As military shipments and some of our customers like Lockheed and Boeing required specific sized cartons, many of these orders sat waiting for those cartons to arrive – or to be ordered.

Before Rick left he introduced me to my single co-worker, Phil. That was the last time I saw Phil until lunch. After lunch he disappeared again. Alone I got out a dozen or so shipments that day.

I soon found this was Phil’s usual Motus Operandi. He punched the clock on time in the morning and reported to his department where he was self-supervised. After shedding his jacket and stashing his lunch he packed a couple of orders and waited for his girlfriend, Anna, to show up and make coffee. After she arrived Phil headed for the Molding Department where his girl friend worked. That would be the last I would see of him.

I didn’t have a girlfriend working there and, besides, even if I had, I had work to do. Three weeks later the department was empty of late orders and only current orders were waiting packaging. The solution was really very simple: I started packing shipments when I arrived in the morning and I continued until I left in the evening. As I freed up the box-bins I sorted out the cartons stacked under the center tables and organized them in their respective bins. I ordered cartons that were required for shipping. And I just kept packing. That was when the VP of Operations offered me a “permanent” position… if I agreed to a cut in pay.

I replied to Gene that I would be unable to accept a cut in pay, as I knew the caliber of my work and the conditions before I arrived. “Okay,” said Gene, “I’ll check with the General Manager but he’s pretty adamant about holding the line in pay, I doubt if they’ll budge.” He walked off.

Let me quickly describe the plant. It was laid out in a very efficient way as raw material and components arrived at the back door and went across the hall for receiving. After receipt they went thru a window into Receiving Inspection and thru a window to the stockroom where they were either stored or kitted for production. Processing and manufacturing started at one end of the plant and proceeded around the parameter of the building from process-to-process thru windows, which decreased hallway traffic to almost nothing. Mirrors were installed at each of the 4 blind-corners. It was this reflection system that allowed me to watch Gene as he walked the inside parameter of the building and showed back up in the department a few minutes later, never entering the office area. “I went to bat for you and managed to convince the boss you were worth the extra expense. But I got the rate you wanted …you owe me.” I ignored the last. I had a new job with insurance, vacation and a paycheck!

One week after accepting I was summoned to Gene’s office. “Since everything is caught up in the shipping department, I wondered if you’d be open to transferring to the Molding Department as Lead-Worker?” I gave this some thought. I had absolutely no experience running machinery, particularly molding machines but, shucks and what the heck (!), I decided to give it a try. I was taken to the Molding Room and introduced to the ladies working this area. The room had formerly been a closet, and as a closet probably considered quite large. Adding 2 floor-mounted and 5 table-mounted molding machines plus a working table, cooling fan and chairs for 3-ladies to this closet made it somewhat intimate. Adding me crowded us even more but we made room.

I quickly found our production output was around 5-units a-day for the largest units, made on the floor-mounted machine. Often 3-4 of these was rejected for one or more of several reasons, which brought the actual acceptable average output to 7 a-week. The quantity desired was 15 a-day. We were a bit behind.

Of the smaller units 10 a-day kept pace with the orders but often managed to get behind after a big order and the girls would scramble to catch-up. They tended not to worry about the larger units as they were always behind so scrambling would not do them any good, consequently, they didn’t really try.

I decided to see if I could better affect the schedule, which went like this:
7:00 – Workers arrive and turn on 3 machines for warm-up (1 floor-mount & 2 table-mount), obtain resin for the day, make coffee
7:30 – Inject first unit in floor unit
7:40 – Remove first unit from machine, mandrel attached, remove mandrel and place unit on cooling fan, wait for unit to cool, drink coffee
7:45 – Inject 1st table unit – machine 1
7:50 – Inject 1st table unit – machine 2
7:55 – Remove 1st table unit – mach #1 – place on cooling fan
8:00 – Remove 1st table unit – mach #2 – place on cooling fan
8:10 – Begin clean-up of first floor unit
8:30 – Break
8:40 – Complete clean-up of first floor unit
8:50 – Clean-up 1st table unit – mach #1
9:00 - Clean-up 1st table unit – mach #2
9:10 – Start 2nd floor unit.

I first began to stretch the workday when I began to arrive ½ hour before everyone else so the machinery was warmed up upon the crews arrival. I chased Phil out of the department and we began running units in parallel. This upped our output on the small units to easily keep up and increased our daily production to 12 of the floor-units, most still rejected in QC for failure to meet required specifications. Still not enough to meet schedule.

The reasons for failure were 1) Bubbles in the epoxy, 2) Cracks in the epoxy, and 3) pinched leads. This also contributed to the lack of desired output. Looking at the desired output I realized we may have a capacity problem but decided eliminating rejects might be the best place to start increasing throughput. First I attacked the most frequent problem: Bubbles in the epoxy.

I did some experimenting with the curing and cooling times but nothing seemed to help. I took the material specs for the epoxy home to study in detail and noticed a subtitle note regarding the ability of the dry resin to soak-up moisture. It was recommended we store the material in a frost-free freezer to prevent moisturization. It was time to try something new. I began to pick-up only enough material to make 2 units at a time, replenishing after breaks and lunch. Bubbles dropped to 0. Engineering had been assisting me during this time with suggestions and evaluation. Together we determined the bubbles were out gassing from the moisture soaked up after the initial runs. By storing the resin in the freezer until just before needed eliminated the soaking up of atmospheric moisture and eliminated the bubbles completely. Next I looked at the problem of cracks.

The units consisted of a series of iron stackings and coils of copper wire that were impregnated and sealed by the molding process. They were set into an aluminum ring or housing through which 2-leads extended. I theorized that the iron, the epoxy, the copper and the aluminum all heated and cooled at different rates. I postulated that leaving the unit on the heavy solid hardened-steel mandrel, while the unit cooled, would help keep the heat up and allow all of the components to cool at the same time. It worked – most of the cracks went completely away. When I began pre-heating the mandrel getting the entire unit to temperature before injecting epoxy, the cracks dropped to 0. Unfortunately pre-heating and leaving the mandrel on the unit cut into our production time and output dropped to 9 a-day. As rejects were down, the quantity of actual acceptable units was up, but still not to acceptable levels. I began to campaign my supervisor for an additional mandrel.

During my campaign I mentioned to the engineer with whom I had been working that overall production had dropped, why it dropped and the fact I was looking for an additional tool. I told him I had just gotten permission to buy a second mandrel. He was surprised to learn I didn’t know about the “other fixture.” He led me to a big dusty room full of obsolete products, old parts, tooling and “bonded” material. Leading me to an old metal cabinet we opened it to find a complete set of tooling minus the mandrel. More searching came up with a mandrel that was not yet hardened. As the newest mandrel was cut and ready to send to hardening I managed to get both of these done for under $100. I also managed to get the two little fixtures used to direct the leads modified so sharp edges no longer cut the leads…I now had 2 complete sets of tooling and 3 mandrels. Total costs were $100. I was elated!

I was now to discover an innate talent: my natural ability to do simple capacity loading and planning. Using this talent I immediately improved my throughput to 18 units a-day. With a bit more re-scheduling, which now included:
1-mandrel and stack preheating,
1 unit setting up in the machine and
1-unit cooling,
I managed to get production up to 30 units a-day with no rejects. That was how I got into trouble.

After my third month of employment and my second week of full production at 30 units a-day I was summoned to the office on the following Monday morning where I found Gene and Rick waiting for me. They looked angry. They were. They immediately accused me of “faking the numbers” telling me it was impossible to get 30 good units a-day from the available resources. I protested explaining that I had added some tooling and was now using both floor-mounted machines. They still didn’t believe me. I sat and listened to how my stated level of production was impossible. I was accused of robbing stacks from the rejected pile of stacks and windings in the Salvage Department and was told that once these units got to test they would all be rejected at a “huge cost in time and material!” They were pissed! Eventually Gene turned red and began yelling and accusing me of trying to sabotage his career. In my final defense I asked them to visit the department and let me explain how and why production had increased. Of course, they called my bluff, which wasn’t a bluff at all.

After a short explanation of how I eliminated the reasons for rejects I showed them the additional tooling, which neither of them realized was available despite the fact that they both had signed off on the additional mandrel and the hardening. After I explained how the scheduling enabled us to increase production for $100 they went away shaking their heads and muttering to themselves. Rick came back 10-minutes later and told me if I ever embarrassed him like that again I would be “out looking for another job…” A week later Gene drafted me into the Production and Material Planning Department over Ricks protests. I became a production planner and expeditor.

So began my career in manufacturing.