VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [44]
“I do hope you are correct. But I must caution you. We do have a system that works. It might not be perfect, it might not be elegant, but it does work. If you go a-messin’ around with things–”
“Now, listen, Maguire. Because I want us to work together. Improvement requires change. Improvement means change. I know you’re accustomed to doing things in a particular way. That is not the way they will be done here in the future. Once we balance the line from one end of the plant to the other there will be no bottlenecks and whatever problems you’ve been having with this Godzilla thing will just be a memory. Everything will run to takt time, like a marching band in a parade.”
“I’m sorry, but … takt time?”
Before Wayne could answer, a red light on top of Godzilla began to flash and a siren went off. Workers leaped into place and began putting on ear protection and heavy gloves. They stood ready, like a pit crew at a NASCAR track as a race car was about to come in.
“What’s going on?” asked Wayne.
“It’s the end of a soak,” said Murphy. “They’re going to offload what’s been cured inside the belly of Godzilla and then reload it with the next batch.”
Richy, the day-shift supervisor for Godzilla, approached with earplugs for them.
“You’ll want to put these on,” Murphy said, taking a set of plugs and handing another pair to Wayne. “This is going to be loud.”
Richy then went to his control console, picked up a microphone to the plant public address system, and his voice went booming through the entire plant.
“Attention all personnel. Godzilla is ready to vent. I repeat: the ’Zilla is about to vent. Please synchronize. Please synchronize.”
Rich then hung up the microphone, turned a handle on the control console – and Godzilla roared as the hot gases within were purged.
7
“Tack time?” asked Zelda.
“No, it’s called takt time,” said her daughter. “It comes from a German word that means ‘time beat’ or ‘clock cycle’ or something like that. It’s time available to work divided by demand – the time available to make the product divided by the units needed. If customer demand called for eight units of something per eight-hour day, your takt time would be about sixty minutes per unit.”
Zelda made a face and said, “I’m glad you understand these things.”
It was Saturday afternoon at Amy’s house, and everyone in the family – except for Harry, who was napping – was in the basement dealing with the chore of laundry. Amy was sorting the clothes, Michelle was transferring wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, Zelda was folding towels, and Ben was very reluctantly learning how to iron.
“Anyway, the point I was trying to make,” said Amy, “is that Wayne Reese is practically living at the plant these days trying to figure out how to get it to run close to takt time. And when he gets it right, we will save a huge amount of money. At least, that’s what he’s talking about. Then I’ve got it made. Based on what he’s whispering to me, we should easily beat the numbers that Nigel Furst wants us to make. If that happens, I think they’ll probably make my position permanent rather than interim. And they’ll also probably give me a nice bonus – which means I can take all of us on a cruise to someplace like, say, Hawaii next year.”
This got Ben’s attention. “Whoa! Mom, are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“All right!” said Michelle. “Let’s hear it for takt time!”
“Well, don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, dear,” said Zelda.
“Right, but Wayne tells me that Murphy Maguire’s operation has a lot of slack in it – a lot of idle machines, a lot of people not working at a hundred percent.”
“Ah, what a shame,” Michelle said sarcastically.
“Well, if you’re paying people to work,” Amy told her, “then you expect them to stay busy – and not be standing around like a certain brother of yours.”
“I think the iron is too hot!