Industrial Fiction: Perverse Incentives

Tuesday was pretty much a repeat of Monday.

Snodgrass followed Matthias to the “skins” job and was handed off. Matthias took a slightly different route to the work-station.

More alarms. More interactions with QA and the supervisor.

At first break, Snodgrass sat in the team-room and pulled a granola bar and a banana out of his new insulated lunch box. The breaks and lunch were too short to make the run down to the cafeteria and still have time to eat the food at a relaxed pace.

Snodgrass bowed to the inevitable. Food from the cafeteria would be a special treat.

Snodgrass did not resent the other workers. He understood that it was pretty much every man for himself because of the circumstances. Hell, he probably would have done the same himself.

Consequently, he was surprised when somebody sat down at his table across from him.

The man looked like he was 45 years-old. Short, slender, tanned and sporting a closely trimmed goatee, the man stuck out his hand as if expecting Snodgrass to shake it.

“Howdy. My name is Walleye” the man offered. “Actually, my name is Wally Pike but you know…” his voice trailed off as he let Snodgrass figure out why his nickname was “Walleye”.

Snodgrass shook the hand. To do otherwise was a breach of etiquette.

“I used to be a per diem supervisor at the Hillsdale plant before the closed it” Walleye said. “I flipped back to hourly when they made the announcement because per diem have no transfer rights.”

Snodgrass made a mental note to find out what “per diem supervisors” were.

“I work on the line over there” Walleye said, pointing across the aisle at the line that ran parallel to the Snodgrass was working on but running in the other direction.

“I heard you were some kind of trouble-shooter from Corporate so I had to come over and check you out” Walleye said.

“I don’t know if I am much of a trouble-shooter” Snodgrass said “but I am from Corporate and am working for Paula Stevens on the launch team.”

Snodgrass perked up with Walleye’s next words.

“We had a problem at Hillsdale a lot like the problem you have with the “skins”.”

“It was absolutely killing us until an engineer named Sandy Schukrenz sorted it out” Walleye said.

“What did she do?” Snodgrass asked. It might be desperately grasping at straws but he was clueless about how to solve the problem.

“I don’t know everything she did, but one of the things I saw is that she had the sequencer load the skins jelly-side-to-jelly-side and bread-side-to-bread-side” Walleye said, demonstrating with his hands first holding them palm-to-palm and then backs-to-backs.

“That way the clips were pointed away from the appearance side” he finished.

Break was almost over and Snodgrass had some clues. “Jelly-side-to-jelly side”, “Sandy Schukrenz” and “Hillsdale”.

His debriefing with Paula and Matthias was short. He mentioned he might have a lead or two but declined to elaborate. He wanted to get up to the office so he could catch people still at work. That was one advantage of the early first-shift which ended at 2:30. He still had a couple of hours when he was likely to catch people in the office.

His first attempt to find “Sandy Schukrenz” came up dry. There were no Schukrenz in the company phone directory. Perhaps she had gotten married.

He was able to get the names of a few people who had worked at the Hillsdale plant by pulling up some archived reports. Some of them were still with the company and he started calling them.

The third one he contacted knew Sandy Schukrenz. She had left the company and had not changed her name. He thought she lived across the state line, over in Indiana.

After that, it was a matter of looking for people who lived within fifty miles of Hillsdale with the last name of Schukrenz. There was one such family living in Fremont.

A little more cyber-stalking turned up a cell number. Snodgrass called it.

Sandy picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

Her voice was soft and slightly breathy, with a total absence of hoarseness or raspiness. She spoke in a slightly higher register than most women.

Her voice was that of a calm, thoughtful woman who never had to raise her voice.

“My name is John Snodgrass and Wally Pike suggested I give you a call” John led off with. He hoped Sandy and Wally had parted on good terms.

“I was wondering about him. How is he doing?” Sandy asked.

John shared what little he knew about Walleye and Sandy seemed satisfied that he had landed on his feet.

“What can I do for you?” Sandy asked after the pleasantries were over.

“We have an incredibly complicated problem in my plant and apparently you are famous for being able to solve EXACTLY this kind of problem. I was wondering if you could give me a few hints on how to proceed” Snodgrass said.

The line was filled with the high, silvery tinkling of Sandy’s laughter. “Hard to believe I am famous for anything” she said.

“What is your problem?” she continued.

Snodgrass briefly described the “skins” installation. He talked about the rack they came in and how close the parts were to each other and how the skins were so long that they were not completely enclosed by the cubbies. He talked about the incredible fragility of the new part and how he was almost certain that many of the defects were already in the parts before they were installed.

He also shared that he had recently discovered that there was a lot of handling of the parts prior to coming to the plant. Some of the skins were manufactured by one supplier while the new product’s skins were manufactured by a new supplier.

Sandi asked a question or two to clarify what Snodgrass was telling her.

When he finished, Sandi sighed and said “That does sound almost identical to a problem I worked on.”

“I don’t know if what I did killed the problem. The plant closed before we had run enough to be sure.” Sandi said.

“This is what we did…”

Then Sandi went on to describe the loading of skins jelly-side-to-jelly side just like Walleye had told him.

But then she added that her parts also came from two different suppliers. Unfortunately, the fragile parts were loaded into the cubbies first and then the cubbies were shipped to the second supplier who loaded his tougher skins.

Sandi suspected that the second supplier had perverse incentives. The second supplier had bid for the new business but not won it. It was to their advantage to make the new guy on the block look like he had crappy quality.

Part of the fix was to reverse the travel route of the cubbies so the tougher ones were loaded first and then the supplier of the more fragile ones loaded theirs. Then the cubbies were shipped to the factory. That way, the only people who touched the most fragile skins were their manufacturer and the people installing them.

“Oh, a final thing” she added. “You need to have them put the job sequence bar-code labels on both ends of the skins.”

A few days ago that information would have been meaningless to him, but after installing a few thousand skins he knew exactly what she meant. The operator scanned the bar-code on the skin to ensure the right skin was going on the unit that was coming into the work station.

He was glad she had mentioned it. It would have been awkward to scan the bar-code if the operator had to completely pull the skin out of the cubby.

“Thanks a million” Snodgrass said. And he meant it.

“So, when I see Walleye, can I tell him how you are doing?” he asked.

“Sure. Tell him Steve is halfway through his last semester at the seminary. He has been preaching in Angola and we expect a job offer from them after he graduates”

“I’ll make sure to tell him” Snodgrass promised.

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