I mentioned in my previous posts the planners and leaders who feel that it is normal to work overtime. They are the ones who, without having any authority over me, could drive me to work long hours. But they are also the ones who convinced me not to work so many, although I may forget the lesson.

We had a production manager who required the presence of these planners and supervisors at a daily meeting every morning to discuss what was likely to go wrong in the coming day. That production manager left the company and has not yet been replaced. As much as the man was scoffed, things have not gone as well since his departure.

On the morning of my epiphany, a planner for our most backlogged line of products (by value), needing parts, began shouting to the effect “We have needed these parts for weeks and nobody will tell us when we will get some! I know the problem isn’t solved yet but at least give us a guess! We need to plan the line, we need to have some kind of idea when we will get these! Just give us dates! Please give us some dates! I’m begging you, just give us some dates!”

He did not give up the theme all at once, but returned to it several times. A little later, during the discussion of some other parts that were once again in trouble, another supervisor chimed in, “For crying out loud! Look around the room, look at the salaries here! We have wasted more money spending all this time talking about these parts than those little parts are even worth!”

As we began the month of May, the fill-in for our missing production manager noted that our performance in the last months had been so abysmal, we were jeopardizing the Memorial Day holiday at the end of the month. His outrage was evident. His disgust and anger have been in evidence all month. But we are still on track for posting the holiday and requiring the hourly workers to come in and compensate for the miserable job done planning and supplying parts.

There are real difficulties involved in planning. Corporate policies limit the choice of suppliers, especially favoring cheap overseas sources, which may be cheaper up front but can also be delayed by pugnacious Customs officials. Even when their quality is impeccable and Customs does not interfere, the time it takes to deliver goods from global distances means that if we have unexpected demand, it can easily take a month for the supplier to respond. At least, without expensive expediting.

I do not know what the coporate requirements are for our suppliers, but we have clear repeat offenders for quality and delivery issues, and those suppliers should simply be dispensed with. The part may become more expensive, and thus the tool more expensive, but if we deliver the tool to the customer on time, that will improve our sales. And we could save a lot of “friction” by cutting out the constant agonizing juggling of priorities and availabilities.

Some of the persons involved simply need to be fired. Anyone who is known by peers and superiors and subordinates as a liar should not retain a job.

This is the set of people who will tell me I am getting paid to do the same thing–to work overtime, to cut corners and pull strings and lash out at those people who have made it impossible for me to meet my goals. They are the people who know how we used to do it, how it was even more barbaric in its treatment of employees but, supposedly, also more effective. They are the people who inspire my feelings of guilt for not managing all the responsibilities thrown at me.

These are the people destroying American manufacturing. Rather than trying to compensate for all the problems, we need to openly confess them, to discuss them baldly and comprehensively and make the problem evident in its grotesque mass and ugly details. Then we need to find some way to slay these monsters. This sounds idealistic; granted, it will never be accomplished fully. But this is effectively what the customer is doing and will always do. The customer may never know the details of the problems we face, but they don’t care. We are a middleman in the process of converting raw materials into their desired product, and they are essentially demanding that our suppliers do a better job so that the middleman in our function can do a better job. The customer will get that, and we need to still be there between our suppliers and the customers when that happens.