Ch 31: The wrong job.

      Libbey Owens Ford or LOF Glass was an American company based in Toledo, Ohio. The Collingwood plant fabricated automotive glass such as windshields, mainly for General Motors. Making a windshield is a fairly complicated process. Each windshield is made from two sheets of flat glass, cut to the shape of a windshield.  The flat sheets are loaded onto a mold that has the contours of the finished windshield. Forty molds at a time are moved through an oval furnace hot enough to soften the glass so that it sags into the molds to take the curve the windshield. In the next step the inner and outer pieces of the molded glass are matted and a sheet of plastic is sandwiched between them. Unprocessed windshields are sent into an autoclave where they are subjected to a vacuum and high temperature causing the plastic sheet to fuse to the two panes of glass and turn transparent. They are then washed, inspected and packed into containers for shipping.

     On my first day of work Fred Parry took me to different departments, then we went to the maintenance shop and I met one crew. There were two crews alternating between the day and the afternoon shift every week. Each crew was headed a group leader who was hourly paid and was supposed to coordinate the work. Fred explained that the maintenance system was based on Work Orders, describing problems or work required and submitted by production departments. Each production department was assigned a couple of maintenance men and they worked without any supervision. 
   
      The next morning I was in the maintenance office, watching the system in practice. A stack of Work Orders were in the IN tray. The group leader spread them out on the desk and the crew started to sort through them, picking up Work Orders for their area. Couple of men were making comments: “I am too busy to do this one”, “That foreman is an asshole, he can wait“ or “The  graveyard shift can work on this one, otherwise they will sleep”  and these Work Orders would go back into the IN tray.  The men then picked up their tool pouches, hopped onto maintenance carts and left. Bill Butters, the group leader- who was supposed to help me with my new job and show me how the maintenance department was organized was gone too   and I was left alone. At lunch time I caught up with Bill. He claimed that he had had a pressing job that needed to be finished and answered many of my questions with yes, no or I don't know.   I spent the day wandering through the plant, watching the production and talking to different foremen.  The rest of the week followed a similar pattern and I learned more about production than about maintenance.

      The buzz word was “Just in time”. General Motors was adopting Kaizen, a Japanese system of production and had ordered all of its suppliers to do the same. Until now, our company knew roughly how many windshields the different GM plants would need the following month and we would stockpile this volume in the plant.  “Just in time” on the other hand required that only one or two days' worth of production would be manufactured for shipment to the GM plants to be installed in cars the following day. This was done mainly for the quality control. Under the existing system, the inspection sometimes missed small chips or scratches caused by improperly calibrated equipment or wrong handling of  glass, and a whole batch of flawed windshields would be stockpiled in the plant. A couple of weeks later they would be shipped to GM and sometimes hundreds of windshields could be installed in cars before the defects were discovered. LOF then had to scramble to find replacement windshields, have them re-inspected and rush them to GM. We then paid GM for lost production, creating some very expensive mistakes.
        The next week I worked with the other crew and the difference was like night and day. Bill McGlashen, the group leader was friendly and cooperative and I started to understand how the maintenance department managed to work without any foremen. “The company was too cheap to hire a foreman, so they promoted me to group leader and gave me a couple more bucks. I still work but mostly as a floater when two hands are needed.   The system works because a long time ago the crew had been assigned to production lines, the men are familiar with them and they know where the problems are and how to fix them. The men are very independent and don't like taking orders. I have to be careful how I talk to them.”
        I was wondering what the next week would be like, working with Bill's crew again. I didn’t touch the “pick and choose” Work Order system, the crew relaxed and couple of men would talk to me about their work.  Maybe the worst was over. My boss dropped in, wondering how I was doing. “Take your time, don't rush into anything, they must get used to having a boss.” But Bill was still elusive, avoiding me whenever he could.  Then I noticed  that at coffee break Bill was talking to one man that was friendly with me  and from the gestures and glances at my office I guessed  they were likely talking about me. Later that man would try to stay away from me. What was it about me that bugged Bill? Maybe I don't know how to deal with him. I decided to talk to the foreman on the afternoon shift.   Gareth, the afternoon foreman, would come to the office with a newspaper and coffee in his hands, look at the work orders, chit-chat about baseball, then take one of the maintenance carts and drive away. I later found the cart parked at the carpenter's shop. Gareth was inside, feet on the table, reading newspapers. I mentioned my problems with Butters and asked him how he deals with the group leaders. “I let them do what they want to do and leave them alone, If they need something, they know where to find me.” and he opened the newspaper, indicating that the discussion was over.

       Then one production foreman told me the strange story of Gareth. The first plant manager was an American who had an older, spinster daughter. At that time Gareth was an hourly paid man, working on the line. He met the manager's daughter at the Christmas party, started to date her and soon they got married. The plant manager's daughter was married to an hourly paid, which was not acceptable, and Gareth was promoted to a staff position. But he was lazy, so nobody wanted to work with him, and he ended up shuffled from one position to another. Later the plant manager was promoted to the vice president of LOF and moved to the Head Office in Toledo. The Collingwood plant got a new Canadian manager and before long Gareth was fired. That was a big mistake. His wife called her dad, now the vice president, and he ordered that Gareth be reinstated.
       Nobody wanted Gareth in his department, so somebody suggested he be made an afternoon maintenance shift foreman, out of sight, out of mind. It worked well. Gareth spent most of the shift in the carpenter's shop reading newspapers and the crew was looked after by the Group Leader. I was shocked. How was I supposed to deal with a Group Leader and his crew that just spends the week on the afternoon shift without any supervision? How was I going to supervise the maintenance crew in the   “Just in Time “system? Maybe I should talk to my boss.  Fred Parry sounded conciliatory. “We had to post the Foreman's job with the Union, it is in the contract and couple of maintenance men applied for it. Now their nose is out of joint because we went outside and hired you. Give them few more weeks and they will get over it. And with Gareth, our hands are tied, you know the situation. Maybe we'll have to find him a different position. “Just in Time” will be a big problem for maintenance. The whole department must be reorganized.  This is why we hired an engineer.”  I couldn't believe it. He is telling me now that I was hired to devise the new maintenance system for “Just in Time?”  It wouldn't make sense to argue with Fred, it dawned on me that I may have picked the wrong job. 
     Maybe I should talk to Bill Butters to find out what he had against me. It was hard to find the right time, and Bill was reluctant to speak with me. Then suddenly he opened up. “I was one of the first to be hired by the company, my clock number is twelve. I have worked in every department and on every machine, I know this place inside-out. When the foreman's job was posted, I applied for it. They turned me down, I wasn't qualified. Then they gave the job...” he looked at me with scorn “... to a Russian.”  To a Russian??  So that was why Bill couldn't stand me. He wanted the foreman job and I had taken it away from him. Now he would try his best to get me fired. 

       The production lines were slowly gearing up for the transition to “Just in Time” and there were many problems not being able to meet the new targets. At the daily production meetings, maintenance became a convenient lightning rod and indirectly the blame was put on the foreman- that is to say on me. I could not argue my case because I was not present at these meetings. 

        One day I saw Fred giving a tour of the plant to a stranger. They stopped in the maintenance shop and talked for a longtime.  I too was given a similar tour when I was being hired and suddenly I saw the handwriting on the wall. They were looking for a new foreman! I was going to get fired.  A week later the phone rang in the office. It was my boss, Fred Parry. “Could you come to my office Jerry?” I froze. Fred never asked me to come to his office, he always came to the maintenance office. He was going to fire me. As I was walking downcast to his office, it occurred to me that this is what a condemned man feels when being taken to the gallows.