by E M Goldratt
Everyone walks away from the computer and joins me around the table. Bob Donovan starts telling me how they're planning some refinements on what we've already done.
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.
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23
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.
Julie and I went out on our "date" that Saturday night, and we actuall
y had a good time. It was nothing exotic. We went to a movie, we got a bite to eat afterwards, and for the heck of it we took a drive through the park on the way home. Very tame. But it was exactly what we needed. It was good just to relax with her. I admit that at first I felt kind of like we were back in high school or something. But, after a while, I decided that wasn't such a bad feeling. I brought her back to her parents at two in the morning, and we made out in the driveway until her old man turned on the porch light.
Since that night, we've continued to see each other. A couple of times last week, I made the drive up to see her. Once, we met halfway at a restaurant. I've been dragging myself to work in the morning, but with no complaints. We've had fun together.
By some unspoken agreement, neither of us talk about di- vorce or marriage. The subject has only come up once, which happened when we talked about the kids and agreed they should stay with Julie and her folks as soon as school ends. I tried then to push us into some answers, but the old argument syndrome be- gan to brew quickly, and I backed off to preserve the peace.
It's a strange state of limbo we're in. It almost feels the way it did before we got married and "settled down." Only now, we're both quite familiar to each other. And there is this storm which has gone south for a while, but which is sure to swing back some- day.
A soft tap at the door interrupts this meditation. I see Fran's face peeking around the edge of the door.
"Ted Spencer is outside," she says. "He says he needs to talk to you about something."
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"What about?"
Fran steps into the office and closes the door behind her. She quickly comes over to my desk and whispers to me.
"I don't know, but I heard on the grapevine that he had an argument with Ralph Nakamura about an hour ago," she says.
"Oh," I say. "Okay, thanks for the warning. Send him in."
A moment later Ted Spencer comes in. He looks mad. I ask him what's happening down in heat-treat.
He says, "Al, you've got to get that computer guy off my back."
"You mean Ralph? What have you got against him?"
"He's trying to turn me into some kind of clerk or some- thing," says Ted. "He's been coming around and asking all kinds of dumb questions. Now he wants me to keep some kind of spe- cial records on what happens in heat-treat."
"What kind of records?" I ask.
"I don't know... he wants me to keep a detailed log of everything that goes in and out of the furnaces... the times we put 'em in, the times we take 'em out, how much time between heats, all that stuff," says Ted. "And I've got too much to do to be bothered with all that. In addition to heat-treat, I've got three other work centers I'm responsible for."
"Why does he want this time log?" I ask.
"How should I know? I mean, we've already got enough paperwork to satisfy anybody, as far as I'm concerned," says Ted. "I think Ralph just wants to play games with numbers. If he's got the time for it, then fine, let him do it in his own department. I've got the productivity of my department to worry about."
Wanting to end this, I nod to him. "Okay, I hear you. Let me look into it."
"Will you keep him out of my area?" asks Ted.
"I'll let you know, Ted."
After he's gone, I have Fran track down Ralph Nakamura for me. What's puzzling me is that Ralph is not what you'd call an abrasive person, and yet he sure seems to have made Ted very upset.
"You wanted to see me?" asks Ralph from the door.
"Yeah, come on in and sit down," I say to him.
He seats himself in front of my desk.
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"So tell me what you did to light Ted Spencer's fuse," I say to him.
Ralph rolls his eyes and says, "All I wanted from him was to keep an accurate record of the actual times for each heat of parts in the furnace. I thought it was a simple enough request."
"What prompted you to ask him?"
"I had a couple of reasons," says Ralph. "One of them is that the data we have on heat-treat seems to be very inaccurate. And if what you say is true, that this operation is so vital to the plant, then it seems to me we ought to have valid statistics on it."
"What makes you think our data is so inaccurate?" I ask.
"Because after I saw the total on last week's shipments I was kind of bothered by something. A few days ago on my own, I did some projections of how many shipments we would actually be able to make last week based on the output of parts from the bottlenecks. According to those projections, we should have been able to do about eighteen to twenty shipments instead of twelve. The projections were so far off that I figured at first I must have made a big mistake. So I took a closer look, double-checked my math and couldn't find anything wrong. Then I saw that the estimates for the NCX-10 were within the ballpark. But for heat- treat, there was a big difference."
"And that's what made you think that the data base must be in error," I say.
"Right," he says. "So I went down to talk to Spencer. And, ah..."
"And what?"
"Well, I noticed some funny things were happening," he says. "He was kind of tight-lipped when I started asking him questions. Finally, I just happened to ask him when the parts that were being treated in the furnace at the moment were going to be finished. I thought I'd get a time on an actual heat by myself, just to see if we were close to the standard. He said the parts could come out at around 3 P.M. So I went away, and came back at three. But nobody was around. I waited for about ten minutes, then went to look for Ted. When I found him, he said he had the furnace helpers working somewhere else and they'd get around to unloading the furnace in a little while. I didn't think much about it. Then around 5:30, as I was leaving for the day, I de- cided I'd go by the furnace to ask what time the parts had actually come out. But the same parts were still in there."
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"Two- and-a-half hours after they c ould have come out, they hadn't been unloaded?" I ask.
"That's right," says Ralph. "So I found Sammy, the second- shift foreman down there, and asked him what was going on. He told me he was short-handed that night, and they'd get to it later. He said it didn't hurt the parts to stay in the furnace. While I was there, he shut off the burners, but I found out later that the parts didn't come out until about eight o'clock. I didn't mean to start trouble, but I'd thought if we recorded the actual times per heat, we'd at least have some realistic figures to use for estimating. You see, I asked some of the hourly people down there and they told me those kinds of delays happen a lot in heat-treat."
"No kidding," I say. "Ralph... I want you to take all the measurements down there that you need. Don't worry about Ted. And do the same thing on the NCX-10."
"Well, I'd like to, but it's kind of a chore," he says. "That's why I wanted Ted and the others just to jot down the times and all."
I say, "Okay, we'll take care of that. And, ah... thanks very much."
"You're welcome," he says.
"By the way, what was the other reason?" I ask him. "You mentioned you had more than one."
"Oh, well, it's probably not that important."
"No, tell me," I say.
"I don't really know if we can do it or not," says Ralph, "but it occurred to me we might find a way to use the bottlenecks to predict when we'll be able to ship an order."
I contemplate that possibility.
"Sounds interesting," I tell him. "Let me know what you come up with."
Bob Donovan's ears are on fire by the time I've finished tell- ing him what Ralph discovered about heat-treat on his own. I'm very upset about this. He's sitting in a chair in my office while I walk in circles in front of him.
But when I'm done, Bob tells me, "Al, the trouble is there is nothing for the guys down there to do while heat-treat is cookin' the parts. You load up one of the damn furnaces, shut the doors, and that's it for six or eight hours, or however long it takes. What
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are they supposed to do? Stand around and twiddle their thumbs?"
"I don't care what they do between times as long as they get the parts in and out of the furnace pronto," I say. "We could have done almost another batch of parts in the five hours of waiting for people to finish what they were doing elsewhere and change loads."
"All right," says Bob. "How about this: we loan the people to other areas while the parts cook, but as soon as the time is up, we make sure we call them back immediately so-"
"No, because what's going to happen is everybody will be very conscientious about it for two days, and then it'll slip back to the way it is now," I say. "I want people at those furnaces stand- ing by, ready to load and unload twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The first ones I want assigned there are foremen who are responsible full-time for what happens down there. And tell Ted Spencer that the next time I see him, he'd better know what's going on in heat-treat or I'll kick his ass."
"You bet," says Bob. "But you know you're talking about two, maybe three people per shift."
"Is that all?" I ask. "Don't you remember what lost time on a bottleneck costs us?"
"Okay, I'm with you," he says. "Tell you the truth, what Ralph found out about heat-treat is a lot like what I found out on my own about those rumors of idle time on the NCX-10."
"What's going on there?"
Bob tells me that, indeed, it's true the NCX-10 is sitting idle for as much as half an hour or more at a time. But the problem is not lunch breaks. If the NCX-10 is being set up and lunch time rolls around, the two guys stay until the setup is completed. Or, if the setup is a long one, they spell each other, so one goes and eats while the other continues with the setup. We're covered fine dur- ing breaks. But if the machine stops, say, in the middle of the afternoon, it may sit there for twenty, thirty, forty minutes or so before anyone gets around to starting a new setup. The reason is the setup people are busy with other machines, with non-bottle- necks.