[citydesk175]

I just spoke to a recently retired friend who had spent some of his formative years at Willow Run. He told me vignettes of longer GM stories from Willow Run. Many of them sounded like the type I had heard at Pontiac and I can assume the GM Culture is universal even in a red headed stepchild division liek Pontiac.

One of his stories ground on me personally because it was about a suggestion that went south. A machinist figured a way to do a cut that was fractions of a second faster and spread out over thousands of parts, really added into money. Somehow the guy's partner figured out how to put a very subtle flaw in his settings and produced a load of parts before they bounced and were traced back to his machine.

Meanwhile, our hero (you remember... the one with the IDEA) polished up his suggestion submission and took it to the Foreman who laugh in his face about it cause his partner had already used up every cent of the guy's savings estimatein the suggestion. "I don't wanna see either one of you for a long time so get out! So much for a great suggestion and 20 grand suggestion award.

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How else can you waste money in a subtle but very expensive way? My Uncle told me of a sheet metal cutter operator who was off on the dayhis boss wanted a dozen pieces 2 feet by 6 feet in a hurry. He had a millwright or somesuch operate the machine and every piece of metal when cut measured out at 22 inches by 6 feet. The boss went ballistic and the Millwright spent an hour looking the machine over to find out the fault.

Finally, the Millwright remembered he had used the other guy's metal yardstick (by Starret or Lufkin) instead of his own. Sure enough, the yardstick was 34 inches long with inches 1 and 2 chopped off very neatly. The enraged boss had the Millwright cut the yardstick into 2 inch pieces and took them to his desk.

The next day the guy was back and could not find his yardstick. He was told his boss had it. The boss got to ask the fatal question: "How long have you been adusting for the shortness of your yardstick?" "About 15 years." "You wont have to do that anymore" And the boss handed him all the pieces of his yardstick.

More to come soon