The Goal

21

I say, "Well, I had my first shot-and-a-beer over there at the bar. I think it was the third stool on the left, but it's been a while."

Donovan asks, "Did you start drinking late in life, or did you grow up in this town?"

"I grew up two blocks from here. My father owned a corner grocery store. My brother runs it today."

"I didn't know you were from Bearington," says Donovan.

"With all the transfers, it's taken me about fifteen years to get back here," I say.

The beers arrive.

Maxine says, "These two are on Joe."

She points to Joe Sednikk who stands behind the bar. Dono- van and I wave out thanks to him.

Donovan raises his glass, and says, "Here's to getting 41427 out the door."

"I'll drink to that," I say and clink my glass against his.

After a few swallows, Donovan looks much more relaxed. But I'm still thinking about what went on tonight.

"You know, we paid a hell of a price for that shipment," I say. "We lost a good machinist. There's the repair bill on the NCX-10. Plus the overtime."

"Plus the time we lost on the NCX-10 while it was down," adds Donovan. Then he says, "But you got to admit that once we got rolling, we really moved. I wish we could do that every day."

I laugh. "No thanks. I don't need days like this one."

"I don't mean we need Bill Peach to walk into the plant every day. But we did ship the order," says Donovan.

"I'm all for shipping orders, Bob, but not the way we did it tonight," I tell him.

"It went out the door, didn't it?"

"Yes, it did. But it was the way that it happened that we can't allow."

"I just saw what had to be done, put everybody to work on it, and the hell with the rules," he says.

"Bob, do you know what our efficiencies would look like if we ran the plant like that every day?" I ask. "We can't just dedi- cate the entire plant to one order at a time. The economies of scale would disappear. Our costs would go-well, they'd be even worse than they are now. We can't run the plant just by the seat- of-the-pants."