VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [20]
“That’s the code for preventive maintenance,” said Bobby, doing as he was told. “You want me to do preventive maintenance on this machine? In the middle of a run?”
“No, I do not. But we have to tell the WING server something, or it sets off alarms. Now, what I really want to know is, where did you get this material?”
“From the storeroom,” said Bobby.
“You just went and got it?”
“Well, yeah. The computer said I should. Did I do something wrong?”
“Now, now, relax,” Murphy said reassuringly. “You’re new. You’ll learn. But from now on, you work only on the materials delivered to your station. You hear? You do not go get them yourself, unless your area manager specifically tells you to do so.”
“But I came in, and I didn’t have anything to work on. What was I supposed to do?”
“If you have no material, Bobby, you cannot produce. And that is exactly what you are supposed to be doing: not producing. It’s kind of an unwritten rule around here. I’m sorry nobody seems to have explained that to you.”
“But the computer–”
“If the computer – the WING terminal – gives you a work instruction, and you do not already have material, ignore it. Because the software is based on faulty assumptions. Much of the time, the instruction will be giving you ‘make work’ just to have you be productive.”
“Mr. Maguire, I don’t mean any disrespect, but isn’t that what I’m supposed to be? Productive?”
Murphy struggled for a moment, trying to think of how to explain this to the young man.
“Bobby, in simplest terms, when you have material in front of you to work on, then yes. We want you to be productive – as in producing. And we want you to focus and do your part as fast as you can, but in accordance with all safety and quality requirements. Okay?
“Now, when you do not have material, then we want you to be useful. You see? They are two different states. Productive is obvious – you are running your equipment and processing material. Useful is a little harder to grasp. Useful means being ready to produce once the material does arrive. It means maintaining your equipment so it does not break and runs at peak efficiency when you are producing. It means checking your tolerances and calibrating your sensors so that your output quality is perfect. It means keeping everything neat and tidy – or even just sweeping the floor. You get my drift?”
“I think so,” said Bobby. “But I’m still not sure why you want me to ignore the computer.”
“Because, Bobby, if you did everything that WING told you to do, you would scarcely be able to walk through the aisles, there would be so much work-in-process inventory piled everywhere. Which was pretty much the way it was just six months ago, when we were required … well, never mind all that. Just follow my rules: material comes to you, then you produce. When you run out of material, you wait and do everything to be useful.”
Just then the plant loudspeaker sounded, with Richy’s voice saying, “Attention, attention! Godzilla is about to vent. Please synchronize. Please synchronize.”
“Bobby, you hear that?”
“Sure, I hear it, every so often. Sometimes once an hour, or every couple of hours, sometimes not for a long time.”
“That’s coming from Autoclave,” Murphy explained. “Every process, everything we do in this plant is timed so that materials will arrive next to that big orange thing down there. That’s the autoclave, what we call Godzilla – just because it’s big and ugly. We always want plenty of material sitting there, ready to go into Godzilla whenever it finishes a batch, or what we call a ‘soak.’ We do not want large quantities of material sitting here or anywhere else, except for two places: the setup area next to Godzilla, and the shipping dock, packaged and ready to go on the truck.”
Bobby was nodding.
“Now, you heard the loudspeaker say, synchronize. That means more raw materials are to be what we call ‘gated’ into production. They will be coming onto the floor, and it means you should have material to work on very shortly. So you should get ready. When it