Industrial fiction

Names were changed. Details fuzzed up and so on and so forth. Events very similar to the events described in the story happen.

 ***

John Snodgrass had his tail in a crack and the door was being slammed shut.

Snodgrass had been re-purposed as a purchasing agent for a middle-sized firm. The firm had been losing market share and closing plants across the country. Management saw enough potential in Snodgrass to find a position for him.

Bill LaRue had recently retired from purchasing and they slid Snodgrass into the spot. LaRue was famous for having all of his ducks-in-a-row but that was not helping Snodgrass today.

The firm had just introduced a new product and to everybody's surprise it had received rave reviews and a massive pre-order book.

A week after full-rate production started, the boys in Legal determined that there was a Federal regulation that applied to this new product. The product had been tested for compliance and had failed spectacularly. 

The bright-boys in Engineering worked 24 hours a day to find a solution. The answer turned out to be a piece of steel that was about 12” long. One end had a couple of nuts welded to it. The other end was an intricate cutout vaguely reminiscent of a manual can-opener. The section was hat-shaped and the material was about 0.080” thick.

Based on how purchasing responsibilities were divided, sourcing the part fell into Snodgrass’s universe of responsibilities. Every additional day that it took Snodgrass to get the flow of new parts to the factory was going to cost the firm hundreds-of-thousands of dollars.

Snodgrass called in his A-team of suppliers and brought them up-to-speed one at a time. He told them that he required a workable quote the next day.

All but one of the suppliers “no-bid” the job. Peter Monsted represented the one firm that was willing to quote the work. Monsted was the quintessential supplier rep. He had “played ball” at Purdue and then followed his father into the world of being a supplier representative.

Monsted was the point-guy for the suppliers. While there are very clear laws about collusion and company policies against accepting certain kinds of gifts, there are very few secrets in the world of supplier reps. Everybody had a very clear picture of what everybody else was doing. They ran into each other as they took purchasing agents out to lunch (and of course the tab was taken care of before the purchasing agent could grab it), on golf courses and in the box seats at sporting events.

Snodgrass had initially been embarrassed by the largess showered upon him by the supplier reps. The purchaser in the next office explained the facts-of-life to him, that “the system” worked to everybody’s advantage. Transactions were handled smoothly with little fuss. Everybody was happy. Don’t rock the boat.

Monsted’s bid left Snodgrass wanting to puke. Six weeks tooling time. $850,000 tooling cost. After reviewing the documents, Snodgrass looked across the table at Monsted and said “The timing is not acceptable. What will it take to compress the timing?”

Monsted had anticipated the question. “We can start delivering parts in four weeks but the premium tooling time will double the tooling cost to $1.7 million.

“I don’t see a piece cost on this proposal” Snodgrass noticed.

“You really don’t have a choice, do you?” Monsted observed.

Snodgrass cocked an eyebrow. “Pencil in a cost and initial it. Guess high. We can always negotiate a lower price after things settle down.”

Monsted reached across the table and pulled the bid toward him. Pulling an elegant silver-and-rosewood pen out of his pocket he causally wrote a number on the page indicated. He added a few notes and slid it back.

The price estimate was “$7.75 per piece, open”

Snodgrass’s stomach acid shot up. That was more than twice what he expected to pay.

“See me first thing in the morning” Snodgrass told him. I need to run this by my boss.

Monsted stood, smiled and winked. “Don’t worry. The skids are greased. Everybody knows how this game is played.”

The receptionist buzzed Snodgrass shortly after Monsted left. “I have a visitor here to see you.”

“Who is it?” Snodgrass asked.

“Bruce Hansen. He says he is a sales rep”

Snodgrass had to think for a minute before he could dredge up a mental image of him. “Sure, send him up”

Hansen walked into Snodgrass’s office and barely greeted him. Sitting down, he reached out and picked up “the can-opener”. He pulled out a pair of calipers and made a few measurements. Smiling a wicked smile, Hansen asked “Is it still open to bid?”

The differences between Monsted and Hansen were stark.

Monsted was elegant and perfectly dressed in a very expensive, classic three-piece suit. He wore lizard-skin, Italian loafers. His hair was perfectly barbered. His hands were manicured.

Hansen was wearing a pair of blue Dickies work pants, a denim shirt, and work-boots. His hands were battered and he had not been able to clean all of the grease from beneath his fingernails. There was “grunge” ground into the calloused palm of his hands.

Snodgrass really didn’t have the energy for it but it would be another hour before his boss was back in the office.

“Sure, as long as you can deliver it in before three” Snodgrass said.

Hansen pulled out his smartphone and opened an app. He typed in a few numbers. Then he called somebody and said “Harry, I need to have you hang on to a few guys”

The other party said something.

“Make it six of them. Might as well tell the hotel across the street to hold a few rooms for us too. Our guys might be able to catch some cat-naps”

“I haven’t had many chances to tell you about my company, Mr Snodgrass” Hansen said. “We make roll-formed parts out of sheet steel and we have the ability to trim them to virtually any shape.”

“We have a standardized shape we keep in stock that is virtually identical to this hat section. If I can take this part back, I can have my guys cutting them out of stock sections with our plasma arc cutter a half hour after I get back” Hansen said.

“And where is that” Snodgrass asked, fully expecting it to be in China.

“It is in Jackson, Michigan just up I-94. It is only 80 minutes away.

Intrigued, in spite of himself, Snodgrass asked “And how soon could you start delivering parts?”

“We have a great crew; people who want to work and are eager to pull down over-time pay. I can deliver a minimum of 100 parts by 7:00 AM tomorrow morning if you write an engineering note that allows me to dip these in wax for corrosion resistance.” Hansen said.

Snodgrass looked at the note block which defined the required surface treatment. Wax was not one of the three coatings that was approved.

“I am afraid we are out of luck” Snodgrass said, regretfully. This had been the first ray of sunshine in the entire goat-festival.

“You have other parts that are wax-dip approved. They are in a similar environment. Can you call an engineer and ask for a temporary deviation?”

Well of course the bright-boys in Engineering were willing to accommodate Snodgrass. “We are moving away from wax because it makes the gloves of the assemblers dirty. We can add it but you get to field the complaints from the assembly plant”

Fourty-five seconds later a certified email authorizing the use of wax-dip was in Snodgrass’s in basket.

“Ok, I will let you make a bid” Snodgrass said.

“The price on the base stock is $1.85 a foot. Fast tooling is simple tooling. Fast tooling is cheap tooling. The plan is to make a window we drop over the piece to use as a template or a guide for the plasma arc cutter. That will be $200.”

“I am going to have to ding you for $2 a part for the manual labor. It will be a lot less once we get rolling but we have to go slow because I want to keep the scrap-rate down. You know manual processes. Welding on nuts by hand is fiddly. You can have fast or you can have quality. Take your pick”

“In parallel, we will be setting up an automatic feed to a robotic PAC. We have a suitable robot in-stock but I am going to have to charge $30,000 to dedicate it to this project. I need to purchase a couple more plasma arc power sources and associated plumbing so I can keep it running if the original PAC craps out.”

“That will be another $8k” Hansen said apologetically. “Industrial quality PAC power sources don’t come cheap”

“Getting back to delivery” Hansen said, stitching back to what he knew was the biggest selling point of his bid. “I can have deliveries made every three hours to keep the plant rolling while we build up inventory.”

“Are you implying you could have the plant running tomorrow?” Snodgrass asked.

“Well, it isn’t quite that simple” Hansen chuckled.

“Engineering has to buy-off on the parts but they can do that at the plant just as easily as at HQ. The other thing is that every new part has some teething pains. I will want Ganzer there to hold our hand as we start building” Hansen said.

“Ganzer?” Snodgrass asked.

“Ganzer is the re-work guy in the plant. If problems arise, he is the guy who has to trim-them-to-fit. Sometimes a part has a corner or bump that makes it almost impossible for the operator to install” Hansen said apologetically.

“After running a couple of hours, Ganzer will have a pretty good idea of what the contour needs to be to make it easy to build. I want one of the first parts Ganzer is happy with to take back to the shop to program our robot to” Hansen said.

“Let me get this straight. For less than $4 a part and less than $50k in tooling you can be supplying me with parts tomorrow? And you can supply in quantity to support the line and rework the assemblies that are in the field?” Snodgrass asked.

“Yes” Hansen said.

“Do it” Snodgrass said.

Hansen picked up his smartphone and called the shop. “I will be back in 90 minutes with some new work. Put roll-form 147 into the machine and run 2000 feet of 2.0mm stock and start heating up the wax dip machine. We have some business.”

Part II