VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [97]
Just as Wayne came onto the plant floor, Kurt sent him a text message asking Wayne to come to the Autoclave area “ASAP.” When Wayne arrived, the situation could not have been more discouraging. Kurt was there arguing with Richy, the day-shift manager, with the ugly, sinister Godzilla hissing in the background.
“You’re going to have to stop this soak right now,” Kurt was telling Richy.
“If we interrupt this soak,” Richy countered, “everything that is now inside of Godzilla has to be scrapped!”
“We have no choice!” said Kurt. “If we do not get this order for the Navy into autoclave processing now, we will not be able to ship it by tomorrow! And if we cannot ship the order on time, the Navy will assess penalties, which under contract they are allowed to do! We may even lose the contract, which would be a disaster! Can’t you understand that?”
“What’s going on?” asked Wayne. “Kurt, are you … ? Are you expediting?”
“Yes,” Kurt admitted. “I – we – are expediting. As I just said, we have no choice. We have to get this shipment out the door by tomorrow, and the only way it’s going to happen is if we start the autoclave processing now.”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” cried Wayne. “How could we be so up against the deadline?”
“Because we just got the material – the pre-preg – from the supplier,” said Kurt. “And the only way we got it this morning was by making them expedite. It’s a specialty pre-preg and only two vendors offer it.”
“Well, let’s try the other one next time!”
“I’m told that the other one is even less reliable – and thirty percent more expensive than the one we use now.”
“Shoot!” muttered Wayne. “Why haven’t we implemented a kanban procedure with every vendor we work with?”
“Well, we’re working on it. But some – like this vendor – don’t want to cooperate. So we’re using the normal min-max reorder procedure, and for whatever reason, there are times when the resupply does not show up when we need it.”
“Excuse me,” said Richy, looking toward Wayne, “but what do you want me to do? There’s thousands of dollars of product inside Godzilla, and it’s all going to be ruined if I stop the process now.”
“But there are millions at stake with the Navy contract!” argued Kurt.
Wayne raised his hand and curled his fingers as if to strangle some invisible phantom. Richy just patiently stared at him.
“Just do what Kurt tells you,” Wayne said with resignation.
“Mr. Reese, that also means we lose thirty to forty minutes of setup time–”
“Just do it!” said Wayne.
Richy grimly turned to Godzilla’s controls.
“Kurt, this is exactly the kind of waste I’ve worked most of my career to eliminate,” said Wayne, “and here it is right in front of me, on my watch, in our plant.”
“I know, I know!” said Kurt. “But I don’t know what else to do!”
As Wayne walked away, he heard the boom-whoosh as Richy went through the venting procedure to purge the hot gasses from the belly of the monster machine.
Wayne desperately needed solitude, a place to be alone to sort out his thoughts. Even without a conscious decision to do so, Wayne headed in the direction of the drab little toolroom tucked away at the end of a seldom-trafficked corridor of the plant. When he reached it and opened the toolroom door, he was relieved to find the room in its usual state: empty.
He sat down at the table, and opened the laptop he had brought along. Through the plant’s wireless network, he was able to log onto WING, and he began calling up pages of data and various reports looking for clues as to what might resolve the multifaceted dilemma he faced.
Soon after he began, Wayne was interrupted. The toolroom door opened, and there stood Jerome Pepps with a brown paper sack in one hand.
“Oh! Excuse me,” said Jayro in surprise. “Sorry. I was just looking for a quiet place to have lunch.”
“Come on in,” Wayne invited. But Jayro hesitated. “Seriously, come in. Have a seat. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
Jayro took a seat at the table and slowly removed various items of lunch from the paper sack.
“What did you want to talk