Our
home in England.Starting Over Again
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One Sunday afternoon my wife and I were relaxing in our new home just outside Farnborough in England; I had a good job, my prospects were excellent, but taxes were sky high, politically the country had moved far to the left and we found it difficult to make ends meet. I had answered an advertisement by an American company looking for electronics people, but my letter was written in a comic vein with the intention of eventually throwing it on the fire, but in the end it was mailed. My wife and I both had visions of America as we had seen it on the movies and now on TV (black and white), and agreed we would never dream of going to live there. After all we had seen the way they behaved in the movies. They shot each other in the street, and they were noisy and rude people. Then we forgot about the entire episode.
Our
home in England.
A few weeks later I received a telegram asking me to go and meet a gentleman at a hotel at Heath Row airport . At first I could not make head or tail of the message, but then I connected this with the advertisement and my letter. I drove to Heath Row and met with the gentleman at the appointed time. We had a somewhat desultory conversation and I came away realizing this must have seemed to be a very strange interview indeed. I did not show any enthusiasm about immigrating to the USA and in fact I must have appeared very negative about the entire affair. My wife and I discussed the interview later and agreed that this was not for us, and very quickly forgot all about it.
But then a week or so later I received a telephone call from TWA saying that my tickets were ready and asking when I would like to fly to the USA. At about the same time I had a phone call from the company concerned, asking me to accept their hospitality for a week to see what I thought of the possibility of working for them. In those days flying the Atlantic was still quite an adventure and I accepted their offer, after agreeing with my wife that "I can’t turn down an opportunity to see the USA, but of course we would never go there to live".
It was late in the year, the weather was foul and although I reached New York on schedule, the flight from connecting local flight was delayed several hours. I was concerned as to where I would stay that night, as I was only allowed to take fifty pounds out of the UK because of the currency restrictions after the war that were still in effect. I need not have worried. Although it was well past midnight when I arrived at the local airport adjacent to the plant, the chief personnel officer was still waiting for me at the gate, and he quickly took me to the local motel. The next day I visited the plant for a full tour of the facilities. In the afternoon I was driven around the area and spent the evening with the family of my future boss. During that first day I had fallen completely in love with the country and it's people. I have now worked in many countries in the world, and I am always proud to be able to say I am an American citizen. I had a medical exam at the plant later in the week, completed all the paper work, and spent the rest of the time being shown around the neighborhood.
Back in the UK I first had to pass on my excitement to my wife who, after hearing my description of my visit, quickly agreed with me that this is where our future lay. Then followed almost a year of filling in forms, more medical examinations, and several trips to the American Embassy in London. Finally one day I was called to the Embassy to be taken to see the deputy ambassador who congratulated me on receiving my immigration permit and told me that all the formalities were now complete. Unfortunately he got my new employer totally mixed up with another company in a totally different field. But now I was free to make arrangements to travel to the USA, I had now become an immigrant.
Once I arrived in the USA there followed a very hectic period. I stayed at a local motel for a few days until I found lodgings with a family not far from the plant, but now I had to buy a car and learn how to drive on the "wrong" side of the road. This was not too difficult, although one or two fellow drivers probably cursed my driving during this period. Once settled down I had to buy a house in the USA, and make all the arrangements for my wife and our very new daughter to join me. At the same time I had to become proficient at my new job as quickly as possible. The latter was not so difficult as it turned out to be very similar to the work that I had done in the UK, except of course that the products were not the same. Much of the work for which I was responsible, was related to military and government equipment and I also had to complete the long forms that were required for me to obtain my security clearance. Until this was granted there were some areas in the plant that technically were under my control, but I was unable to visit.
The security clearance application form was long and detailed and asked many questions that I could only answer from memory. I called my contact at DOD on the phone and explained that my memory may have failed me in some places especially with respect to where I visited overseas during my days with the fishing fleet, and not all the details may be correct. His response was "If you could answer all the questions correctly we would be very suspicious". Later he called me to say that there were some inconsistencies they could not resolve relating to my life over twenty years ago and could I give the names and addresses of two American citizens who could vouch for me during that time period. I asked him in return if he could give me the names of two British citizens who could vouch for his activities the previous night. There was a short silence, then a chuckle and he said that he understood.
I have had several security clearances for many years at different levels. In spite of all of the negative publicity that the media often ascribes to our security organizations, I always found them to be extremely professional. They always proved to be very practical and easy to work with. I also quickly became involved in committees formed to develop standards and specifications for electronic equipment, for military purposes and through this work, for commercial systems also. This brought me into contact with a lot of the top technical people in the industry, and attending the various meetings slowly increased the amount of travel that went with my job.
I remember the first long trip in the USA, from Hartford to the Boeing plant in Seattle where my company was bidding on the electronics systems for the 747 which was at that time in the design phase. The first surprise when I arrived at the Boeing plant was to be met by an old colleague from the company I had just left in England. He had emigrated a few months earlier, and somehow had heard my name mentioned and arranged to meet me. The second surprise was the size of the wooden mock up of the 747 being used in the design phase. After walking around and climbing the staircase to the top cabin, I was almost convinced that such a monster could never get off the ground.
But we won the contract for the avionics and work started on the design. We were already making electronics for various commercial and military planes, but this was totally new if only because of the size of the aircraft. In the end everything went very smoothly and within a year we were making components for the DC10 and the L1011, so that the size of the aircraft soon ceased to be of concern. The Apollo program was also now in full swing and our company was involved in making the electronics for the lunar module as well as the air supply backpacks for the space suits. The electronics were assembled in a clean room specially built for the purpose, to extremely stringent standards. The manufacturing records that went with the equipment occupied many times more space than the product itself, but every detail was carefully inspected and recorded so that any failure could be traced back through every operation to the raw materials used.
Fortunately none of our equipment failed. However a fan used in the space suit breathing equipment accidentally had water drain into it during a practice session when the suit was inverted and when it was being dried out the fan motor was found to have a bearing inserted backwards. This caused a panic as all the space suits were completed and only a few days were left before launch. The paperwork now proved its use, as we were able to trace the bearing insertion process step and found that a new operator had fitted the bearings on that particular motor only. When we had her assemble another motor she also put the bearing in backwards through misreading the drawing. The other operators who had fitted bearings had no trouble in fitting them correctly. On that basis the mission was launched. Sometime later a test was carried out and there was no difference in performance with the reversed bearing; --- but we could take no risks with Apollo. I was not directly involved in the failed mission of Apollo 13, but other parts of our company were, and a great deal of effort, worry and concern was expended until we knew the crew were all safe. Our space lab assisted in developing the corrective actions that finally allowed them to get back to Earth safely. Few people realize just how close to total failure this mission came, there was very little oxygen left when they finally landed. The crew came to visit our plant a few weeks later, just to thank us all for our efforts on their behalf.
I enjoyed the many technical challenges that arose in developing aerospace equipment. We built the first electronic jet engine fuel controller, which used surface mount technology many years before SMT became a common term. The new controller replaced the old pneumatic/mechanical version and had to be mounted on the engine in a similar manner. The environmental conditions were extremely severe for an electronics system and heat control demanded that all the components had to be thermally bonded to the cooling system. This was developed by using the fuel flowing to the engine as a coolant by passing it through channels in a heat sink on which the electronics printed wiring boards were bonded. This was at the time a totally new technology and we had to develop our own processes, manufacturing the assembly equipment and developing the new methods. Eventually the system controllers were completed and performed just as we had planned. They were extremely successful and much more efficient and flexible than the mechanical version; they could also be easily re-programmed when required. Multi layer PWBs were also now being developed and we participated in this new technology. I was also involved in the manufacture of the electronics for various missile systems.
Unfortunately it seems inevitable that company philosophies and personnel change. I was never very good at handling the politics that seem to permeate senior management in large companies. I tended to tell the facts as I saw them no matter what the consequences and this was apparently my downfall. I have no idea who I upset or why, but those concerned must have been high up in the corporate structure. My original boss who had hired me resigned and left to work for another company. After several months working for my new boss, he called me one morning into his office where he explained that although my work during the past nine years had always been exemplary I was to be laid off for "Lack of work". He then asked me if I was prepared to crawl on my hands and knees and plead with him to be kept on. I have no idea what response he expected, but I told him in no uncertain terms that I had never crawled for anyone or anything, and had no intention of doing so for him. He then gave me half an hour to clear my desk and get out of the plant and when I got back to my office an armed guard was waiting to escort me off the premises. The very next day my new boss appointed his old friend from the department in the company he had previously managed, to take my place.
I immediately called our VP Engineering, an old colleague, who was astounded and refused to believe that this could happen, "This is ridiculous, there must be some mistake" He said, "I'll soon sort this out and call you back. We need you badly and you've enough outstanding work for me alone to keep you busy for the next two years". I explained that I was being escorted out of the building and he promised to call me at home. He called a few days later and explained that he could not find the underlying cause of my "lay off", and could do nothing as he had no authority over manufacturing. "The shutters come down at corporate headquarters as soon as your name is mentioned" he told me, "I can find no information at all, but I have been told that you will never be hired by any of the many companies of our corporation". But he offered his services and good name in my search for another job.
The only thing that I could think of that triggered this had occurred a few months earlier. I had been appointed Chairman of a standards committee that was to develop a corporate specification for printed wiring boards. Up to this time every division of the corporation had a its own standard that caused utter confusion among our suppliers. So once a month I would call a meeting and about twenty engineers would fly in from the various plants all over the country, we would meet for a couple of hours to try and agree the wording of our new specification, have lunch together then meet for about two hours in the afternoon and then return to our respective companies. We all agreed on what should be done but every time I asked someone to work on the program I was told, "But we do not have anything in our budget to pay for this". I estimated that each meeting cost at least ten thousand dollars in travel costs while a budget of around $5,000 would complete the task. After almost a year of meetings I became totally frustrated as we were not progressing to the slightest degree, so one day drove over to the glass tower that housed corporate HQ and asked to see the corporate engineering VP. It would have been easier to get into Fort Knox but eventually I met with him and explained that I wanted to get this task finished as the specifications were urgently needed. He then told me that what I was doing was could harm my career with the company as he would have to approach the presidents of every division and ask for funds. He was very pleasant but at this point I was ushered out. I never received a budget.
I was extremely angry at my dismissal, I was well known and had an excellent reputation in the industry, no one had ever complained about my work, I had always completed every assignment on time and under budget. I was only a few weeks from joining the corporate pension plan, and would now receive nothing for my nine years of employment. It had become a very political situation and for their own security many old colleagues no longer desired my friendship or would even speak to me. However it is very true that in times of trouble true friendship comes to the surface. One senior engineering manager who was also an old friend was extremely supportive and called me every few days. I was extremely grateful for his friendship, and extremely sad when he died several years later. He was a true friend and I will always be grateful to "Bob". If I had the knowledge that I have today I would have sued the company for their action, but with a family to support I put my efforts into finding another job. Later when I had my own consulting business I was asked by this company to review their manufacturing procedures, define their problems and suggest the necessary corrective action. I spent a day looking over their plant in order to deliver a detailed plan for the required training. As was usual I sent my bill for this work but received a phone call saying that it was not their practice to pay for preliminary investigations. It took a letter to their President before I received payment.
At the time work was far from plentiful, I was getting "over the hill" as far as age was concerned, and also had the worry of supporting my family. But that summer my wife and I put all our concerns aside and went to work on the many projects around our home, tucked away in the woods of northern Connecticut. We finally finished the many things we had never had time to do: cutting trees, putting up fences, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. In many respects the six months that followed were some of happiest since we came to the USA. Then another job appeared, and it was time to get back to work.
Our enforced summer vacation eventually came to an end when I was offered a job as Manager of Manufacturing at a Printed Wiring Board fabrication plant in a town about 60 miles away. It was too far to commute and we eventually had to sell our home in the hills of Connecticut and move to the seashore. We were fortunate in finding a very beautiful spot. It lay at the junction of a river and a creek, on a piece of high ground and was circled by marshes that flooded at high tides. It was almost a mile from the main road, and extremely quiet and peaceful
We had initially set out to buy land for building our home and the real estate sales lady took us to see this spot, Almost as an afterthought she said that there was an old house on the property, but "You can just put a bulldozer through it". After spending almost an entire day wandering through the half-wrecked house we decided that it was unique and we would not pull it down. It had been built by an officer of the Natural History Museum in New York as a hunting lodge from which he could shoot water fowl for the exhibits. It had been added to several times and had been owned by a well known photographer who had built a complete dark room in the basement. So began several years of hard work to rebuild and refurbish the house and it eventually became a very comfortable home that we were extremely reluctant to leave when eventually a change of job forced another relocation.
The company I went to work for employed about 80 people and although it was reasonably successful in making quite complex multi-layer printed wiring boards, it had very serious problems. Deliveries were rarely on time, schedules and planning were almost non existent and there was little evidence of any effective organization. Profits were small and during some months non-existent. Everyone was doing their best but they sadly lacked leadership. After a few months to gain technical experience I was given the task of pulling things together.
This was an extremely difficult task as the real problem lay not with the company itself, but with the company president and owner. He was an excellent salesman, and a great entrepreneur, but he was the worst manager I have ever met. He refused to delegate authority at any level and insisted on making every decision himself no matter how small. I eventually persuaded him to let me take over the day to day operation. First I hired a chief engineer, then I set up an office in a trailer in the car park to give us some much-needed space, and set out to define the various processes we were using. We found that most of the operation depended totally on the memories of the operators and there was little or no process control. We also developed a system for scheduling production, and after a few months of very hard work, we completed our reorganization while keeping the plant running at the same time.
There followed several months of increasingly smooth running; we met our deliveries, our quality improved dramatically and we finally consistently ran at a profit. I was called to the boss's office at this time and he told me "You are the best thing that ever happened to this company". We picked up more work for various Government agencies, and finally received full security clearance so that we could make classified products. I found this interesting, especially as I was given the responsibility for all security and had to interface with the various government agencies.
But our president was unable to keep his fingers out of the plant. Finally one Saturday I had gone into the factory to sort out some items while it was quiet, and I found him working in the press shop. All the presses were full and operating at maximum capacity as he tried out a new board design he wanted to sell to the computer industry. I reminded him that I had to have the presses empty, clean and ready to go at 7am on Monday morning, and left him to his experiments. But on Monday he was still experimenting and on Tuesday as well. I went to his office and reminded him that everything depended on keeping to the schedule and we were now two days late. Also I reminded him that I had been forced to send half of the workers home as the manufacturing process was an in line operation and I had no materials for them to work on until I could use the presses. His comment was that we should just use more overtime to make up the losses. He simply could not understand that it was the availability of the presses that limited the production, not manpower.
Inevitably at the end of the month we had deliveries delayed, we had failed to meet our profit plan, and were struggling to get back on track. I was called again to the boss's office and he began a tirade telling me what a lousy job I was doing. This was when I finally blew my top. I reached across his desk, gripped him by the necktie and threatened to punch him in the mouth. I then told him that he was the cause of all our problems, and the worst manager I had ever met in all my working life. To my surprise he agreed, and we went out to lunch to talk things over. Lunch lasted most of the afternoon and he accepted the fact that he had to keep out of the workings of the plant. Within a few weeks we returned to a more or less smooth operation. However it was soon obvious to me that this would never last. Our boss was well meaning, but quite unable to keep his fingers out of the pie, and leave the decision making to the department managers.
I began to look for another job, although neither my wife nor I wanted to move again but it seemed impossible to find employment in the area. Then out of the blue an old colleague from my Mil: Spec: review days, lets call him Peter, called up to know if I was available. The company he worked for was looking for someone to head up their Research and Design group, and he wondered if I would like to join them at their main plant in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
It was obvious that in spite of our recent discussions, my relationship with my boss was unlikely to change, and the uncertainty was extremely stressful. From time to time I was working 12 to 14 hours a day to make up for the interference of our president, often getting up at 5am to prepare the plant for the days work, so we decided to look into the offer from Peter although it meant relocating once again. I made several trips to Montreal to talk with the president and owner of the new company before we finally agreed to take the job. I parted from my old boss on friendly terms, and he quickly hired a new man to replace me. The replacement had exactly the same problems as I had found. Eventually the company faltered, and was sold to another board manufacturer.
I always felt very sad about this company. There were very many dedicated people working there, some of us put in very long hours to bring the company into profitability. Immediately before I left, new customers were being attracted to our high quality and our ability to ship on schedule. Our boss was neither stupid nor lacking in intelligence. He was simply quite unable to let go the reins, he had to make every decision no matter how tiny, and no matter whether he understood the consequences of his actions or not.
I got to know the road between Montreal and Connecticut very well during the next months while we sold our home in the USA and bought a new one in Quebec. I commuted the 370 miles almost every other weekend. It was a 6 to 8 hour drive depending on the weather and the amount of daylight. I managed to make the trip even during the gasoline shortage, when I carried a can of gas in the trunk and refilled the tank at the half way mark.
The new job offered the promise of a bright future, and good jobs were few and far between at that time. But we were unhappy with the move to Quebec. Our first brush with what turned out to be a major problem occurred at an interview at the Canadian Embassy in New York, where we went in order to obtain our permit for residence in Canada. The federal officials we came in contact with treated us with extreme courtesy and friendliness. The interviewing officer merely held up the thick file he had received from the US security authorities, "I have all the information I need" he laughed, "I’ve nothing more to ask you, welcome to Canada".
The same could not be said for the young lady who was the Quebec provincial representative and interviewed us for a short time after we had completed our meeting with the federal officer. The question of the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada was being quite heatedly debated at that time, and her first question to me was "Aren't you afraid to bring your wife and daughter to Quebec"? I explained that I had visited Montreal several times during my interviews and jokingly said that I had seen no corpses dangling from street lamps. But my humor was in vain, the next question being "Why have you been given this job, isn't there someone from Quebec who can do it"? The questioning went on in this vein for some time and then we were summarily dismissed.
We put this entire partisanship aside, determined to learn French and fit in with the local people. We eventually moved to a house in Carignan, on the South Shore of the St Lawrence River. Then followed several years that were not particularly pleasant especially for my wife and daughter. We met many kind and friendly people, both French and English speaking, but on the whole we were made aware that we were not welcome. My wife joined a group of volunteers delivering "meals on wheels", but the organizers soon began receiving complaints because she was English speaking with only a smattering of French. When we moved into our new home I went to meet the neighbor and greeted her in my best French apologizing for the accent but assuring her that we were taking lessons and hoped that through our conversations my accent would improve. Her reply was "Hearing English makes my headache", and she never spoke to us again.
We also ran up against the bureaucracy in the province when my daughter was enrolled in the school system. The law said that as an immigrant she had to be taught in French in a French school. I accepted this and the additional year that would have to be added to her schooling, believing that a sound knowledge of French would be an asset. I asked to visit the school and see how she would "fit in", but I was told it was none of my business. None the less I insisted, pointing out that here was a ten-year-old child who had never heard a word of French spoken in her life. At the school I discovered the principle did not speak any English and my French was inadequate, but we found a bilingual secretary who acted as interpreter.
I was told that my daughter would "sit in with the class and pick it up as best she can". When I said that this was not acceptable and I intended to complain to higher authority, there was a rapid conversation in French between the principle and the secretary, which I could not understand. I was then told "Send her to the English school". I pointed out this was illegal and as a newcomer to Quebec I did not intend to break the law. By the time I returned to the main education offices the message had been passed to them. They assured me that they would take care of the matter and told me to send my daughter to the local English school while the situation was resolved.
A few days later I received a phone call asking me to take my daughter to the main hospital in Montreal for "psychiatric testing". I told them that I refused to do this and pay the fee of several hundred dollar that the authorities requested, as she was a perfectly normal child. Shortly afterwards the school officials called again and pleaded with me to take her for this test and said that this examination would be paid for by the school. We duly arrived at the hospital and reported to the appropriate doctor. He took my daughter away and after some time, came back to me, puzzled, "Your daughter is a perfectly normal young lady" he pointed out, "Why have you brought her here for testing"? When I explained the circumstances he smiled, "Oh I know what to put in the report," he said. A few weeks later we received a beautiful parchment complete with a formal seal and the signature of the Minister of Education. It gives my daughter, her children and her children’s children the right to be educated in English in the Province of Quebec. Apparently the law requiring teaching in French can be circumvented if it can be shown to be potentially damaging to the child.
I had a similar problem when I went to register my car. First from the fact that I had no USA plates on the car, having returned them to the authorities in the US,. Then, in spite of the Federal law, there were no application forms in English, and finally even though I had all the import permits I was told that I had no evidence of ownership. After over four hours of waiting and being passed from one bureaucrat to another I walked unannounced straight into the senior managers office and told him I intended to go immediately to the police and ask them to prosecute me for not having a current license on my car. Once in front of the magistrate I told him I would tell all that had happened in his offices. He grabbed my papers, stamped them and told me to "Get out".
I thoroughly enjoyed my work in Montreal; it was interesting and challenging, and I had a team of about 40 engineers and mechanics working for me. We quickly developed some new and in some ways original machines, and the business flourished. Language was no problem in the factory; in fact English was spoken by almost everyone. In spite of this every document had to be presented also in French, and the "language police" would come around to check that this rule was complied with in every detail. During this period I wrote my first book, titled "The Handbook of Machine Soldering" which was initially a compilation of all the notes of the many lectures and training programs I was asked to present. I also became deeply involved in representing the company in the various military and civilian committees that were engaged in developing and revising the soldering standards. I found myself spending more and more time away from the office giving training programs and solving problems on the shop floor for various clients.
When I joined the company it was owned and run by one man, a very good manager who believed very strongly in customer service, and because of him the company had flourished and was respected world wide. As an example I was working in the factory one Friday morning when a call came from an English company to say that a drive motor had just failed in a machine we had very recently installed. No one else was available, so I literally picked up a replacement motor from the stores, drove to the airport and took the first flight to London. The machine was up and running by Sunday afternoon and I was back on the shop floor on Monday morning. All done at no charge, as customer service.
However after a few years there were many changes taking place in the organization. Under pressure from his family the original owner relinquished his personal control, and handed the reins to a close relative. He came to talk to me one afternoon and explained that he would be stepping down from any form of direct control and I was to report to his new appointee. Then the politics of a large company began to appear and personal likes and dislikes of the new CEO became the primary reason for changes to the organization. He was quite incapable of accepting any form of criticism, and surrounded himself with "yes men". Finally after almost a year of chaos the old owner suddenly turned up in my office one day, shut the door and asked for my help. He told me that the company had lost well over a million dollars and no one could account for the loss. There was little I could do but he once more took over control of the company.
I was sent to the UK to review the performance of a similar business in that country and then followed several months of high level negotiations that culminated in our company being acquired by a multi national group. By this time however my family and I had moved back to the USA. The old owner was a very straightforward and honest individual, and he knew that my wife and I were far from happy, both with the changes taking place in the company and living in Quebec. He suggested that I might like to make a move. He asked me if I was prepared to set up a new company specifically to provide technical consulting services to our clients. I was to become executive VP and could set up the operation in the USA.
Although this meant moving once again, we could not wait to get back to the States. The office was set up on the outskirts of White Plains about 20 miles from the City of NY, and we bought a house on a lake about a further 30 miles north. The business was an immediate success, although I carried out almost all of the work myself, and we felt we had finally settled down into a permanent position. However this was not to be.
Once the new owners took control of the corporation I found that many of the working agreements that I had made with the original owners were forgotten or ignored. I was afraid that my reputation could become tarnished if I complied with some of the instructions I was being given. For example I was very much aware that as a paid consultant I should not promote company products, but I was instructed to inform the marketing people of every contact that I made and even to take a salesman with me when I presented training programs. After talking things over with my wife we decided to take a big gamble and set up our own consulting company working from our home and specializing in the technologies of manufacturing electronics. I parted from my old company on good terms, in fact my first job, as a private consultant was to lecture for them in China.
The first few weeks of "being on our own" were scary. Although my wife and I did all the work ourselves, setting up the company soon began to eat into our savings. As quickly as possible we started a series of training programs on soldering technologies that proved very popular and provided a fairly regular income. They also gave us the publicity we needed to bring in our consulting clients.
We very rarely found it necessary to advertise our services, but we continued to add to our list of clients simply through "word of mouth" from our satisfied customers. The work of course involved a great deal of travel, indeed as I used to say, "We don't make any money sitting in the office". At first it was exciting to look at my itinerary and see all the places that I would be visiting. However after a few years the glamour faded as one hotel and one airport began to look very much like another and I spent more and more nights in airports waiting for delayed or cancelled flights. In the rush of business all I usually saw of any new city was the airport, the hotel and the company I was visiting
During this period I worked all over the USA and Canada and along most of the border of Mexico. Once or twice a year we arranged our overseas work. Working in a foreign country called for help in arranging travel and accommodation and responding to the many requests for advice and assistance. My wife proved to be an indispensable member of the team when working overseas. We had many adventures during our travels that are described in the section "Round the World".
Working in many different companies gave me a wonderful opportunity to observe the fundamental causes of manufacturing problems. I found it was not difficult to eliminate the technical difficulties, but much more of a problem to make the management changes that were necessary to assure that the problems would not start again the moment that I left the plant. In a few cases this proved to be totally impossible, in many it was extremely difficult, but in the remainder it was easy once the overall philosophy of process control was truly accepted and put into operation. My experiences only reinforced the knowledge that efficiency and quality is not merely a matter for the shop floor. It has to come down from top management, and if they are not trained and aware of their responsibilities nothing can be achieved. .
It was also fascinating to find the trivial but unrecognized things that could plague a company and ultimately bring their production to a halt. It was not the complex technically advanced processes that caused problems, everyone was skilled in these technologies, but rather the items that were not even recognized as important.
Some examples.
The operator who left the door of the stencil machine, that applied solder paste to the printed wiring board, open so that she could watch the squeegee move back and forth. Unfortunately it was opposite an air conditioner outlet that directed cold dry air into the machine. This caused the solder paste to dry too quickly and components fell off before they could be reflowed.
A similar case of an operator who left boards with paste applied while she went for lunch, with the result that a random scattering of parts fell off prior to reflow.
The Purchasing officer who bought one years supply of PWBs from the Far East because he "Got a better price by buying in quantity". After a few months in stores they were unsolderable, causing a very high rate of rework and field failures.
In one plant a small stock of every component was kept on the shop floor, so that operators would not have to go to stores for replacements. They became mixed up and of poor solderability causing a random but consistent number of "incorrect part" and "dewetting" defects that were extremely difficult to trace.
A cleaning machine operator occasionally speeded up the conveyor when the break bell sounded in order to clear the machine quickly so that he could go for his coffee. The affected boards eventually failed several months later in the field because of low surface resistance but it was extremely difficult to find this very fundamental cause of the failures and it was only after observing the cleaning process over several weeks that the problem was solved. In the meantime the random failures continued and eventually cost the company several millions of dollars. Just because the operator had not been clearly instructed in the technology involved.
In most cases the operator was not to blame, but rather the lack of training in the basic theory of the process. But formal training costs money, and the immediate pay back is not easy to measure. All too often "On the job training" is the method of teaching the new operator. This of course guarantees that the new operator retains all the mistakes of the old one.
After a while I became very sensitive to the attitude of senior management in the various companies, and the way that they contributed to the overall efficiency. Where management was skilled, trained and aware of their responsibilities, it was so easy to transform the operation into an exciting and efficient business.
I remember one company where the president was determined to make the business succeed. He attended every training session together with all the department heads. One morning one of the managers was late and tried to sneak into the session unobserved. The president held up his hand "Excuse me Ralph" he said and turning to the late comer commented quietly "Mr. xxx if I can arrive here on time so can you". On the other hand I also remember several companies that assumed that only the shop floor operators needed attention and I never met any of the senior management. They invariably failed or changed managers. These experiences made me write the book titled "Managing the Manufacturing Process", and forced me to consider very carefully the place and importance of management.
As an example of the difficulty of identifying the basic cause of some product defects, consider the following. I was called on to identify and correct the high rate of defects that one company was having, together with a totally unacceptable rate of field failures. I arrived at the plant and was making an initial review of the shop floor with the Plant Manager, when an inspector from Receiving Inspection came along holding a sample PWB. "We've had to reject this last lot of boards," she said, holding up the sample board, "They don't pass the solderability test". "Tough luck" replied the Plant Manager, "We'll have to use them anyway, to meet the schedule, send them the the MRB (Materials Review Board)".
I said nothing, but at the end of my review I went to Receiving Inspection. The Chief Inspector was a lady, and when I asked her what was happening, she pulled open a filing cabinet and showed me the last few months' rejection forms for solderability. In every case the rejected materials had been sent to the MRB, and accepted with comments such as "Re-tin and use" or "Will be all right if they are cleaned before soldering". As the Chief Inspector explained, "I've given up rejecting anything for solderability unless it's really bad and even then it's eventually accepted, especially if it impacts the production schedule". I asked to talk to the MRB and found that it was only one man, a Design Engineer. It had originally been four people. The Design Engineer, a QC Manager, a Manufacturing Engineer and the Line Supervisor. Disagreements had arisen as to what should be accepted and what should be rejected. Members of the MRB had fallen out until only the designer was left. I talked to him and found that he had not the faintest idea of the importance of solderability, in fact he knew little about the various manufacturing processes. He was however very closely aligned with the Plant Manager and accepted his desire to meet the schedule no matter what the cost. He genuinely believed that manufacturing could overcome any solderability problems by "tweaking the settings on the solder machine".
This was a matter with little to do with technology, but directly related to training and management. First we set up a training program on solderability, for all the departments concerned, not merely the shop floor, including Materials Procurement, Manufacturing Engineering and Design Engineering. Then we eliminated the MRB and made quite sure that Receiving Inspection was properly trained in all aspects of Inspection for solderability. We then had to show that the fundamental cause of the defective products was not in production at all, but in the failure of purchasing to buy acceptable materials on schedule.
This was far from an isolated example, I found one company that had purchased a year's supply of boards from Taiwan, and had the entire order shipped in one lot because it "Saved shipping costs". The Purchasing people had never received any training and did not understand that storing PWBs for more than six months guaranteed that solderability problems would impact their production. Another aerospace company had a similar problem and by the time it had been resolved we had scrapped over $1.2 million worth of boards. They had been purchased in one large lot "To get a better price". Some had been in stores for nearly five years.
After the first year we relaxed as work came in fairly regularly, indeed at times we had more than I could handle. Several colleagues suggested that they would like to join in our growing business, but I very quickly came to recognize that there was a very fine line between acting for the client and acting as a promoter of products and processes. This problem was not made easier by the constant suggestions from colleagues in the industry that I should describe the advantages of their products in my lectures, and that I would be rewarded for promoting them. Finally my wife and I decided that we would "Go it alone", and that is the way we operated until the age came to pull back on the work load.
With all the travel, it was not difficult to rack up mileage on my frequent flyer account. Looking at it one day I noticed there were several thousand miles available, and asked my wife where she would like to go for a holiday. She thought I was kidding and made some remark about going to Australia. I said nothing but arranged for a three-week stay "Down Under". When I finally told her she said she said she thought I was joking and would love to see an old nursing friend she had met when doing her training and had not seen for years because she and her husband had emigrated to Australia. We had enough mileage to travel first class and even received a free rental car and air travel in Australia. This was one case where American Airlines really treated us like royalty. We had a terrific holiday, stayed for a while with my wife’s old friends and saw quite a lot of Australia, a magnificent country.
Today we have retired from industry and the stress of travel and overseas assignments. Now I write and give my services to local community affairs. These last 20 years have been exciting, they have taken us all over the world and we have made friends in many countries.