The Goal

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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.

"Then let's do the same thing on the NCX-10 as I want to do on heat-treat," I tell Bob. "Let's get a machinist and a helper and have them permanently stationed at the NCX-10. When it stops, they can get to work on it immediately."