Industrial Fiction: Beer Coolers

Abigail and John were on their third date. John had shown up at the dog park the night after the first date and Abigail simply handed him a couple of leashes. 

John felt a romantic attraction but he had no idea what Abigail was feeling.

The second date was spent with Abigail talking about what it was like to work for the country’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer.

Tonight was John’s turn.

Paula and Matthias left him in the team that installed Random Parts. He was learning a new job but was rotating back into the SD card job every-other rotation.

He suspected that Paula and Matthias figured that if he soaked in the problem long enough that he would find a solution. He wished they did not has such a high regard for his problem solving ability.

He had just shared with Abigail how the SD card job required that the operator scour the entire 30 foot length of the pick-face and that it required 4-to-7 error-prone “picks”.

“That is crazy” she murmured.

She was uncharacteristically quiet while John outlined the other weirdness of the station.

After John wound down, she asked “Would it be useful if, once you knew the model you were going to build next, you could walk to one place on the pick-face and get all seven parts you needed to build that model?”

“Yeah” John agreed “but that would mean a lot of redundancy. Some parts are used on multiple models.”

“Why is that a problem?” Abigail asked. “We stock beer coolers in at least five places in the store. We have a display of them in the Beverage aisle, in the Camping aisle, in the Boating aisle. We have a stack of them next to the ice machine and near the deli/picnic display and since it is summer we have a display of them in the Seasonal aisle.”

The more John thought about it, the more attractive the proposition seemed. When a “Blue” unit came into station, walk over to the “Blue racks” and grab the correct gas-strut, hinge, SD card and the rest.

“The last thing Sam-Mart wants it for customers to realize they forgot something and go into a competitor’s store. We want them to go to one aisle and get EVERYTHING they need for their project. If they have to hunt for odds-and-ends they might be half-way to Crystal Lake before they remember what they forgot. Then they be-bopp into Meiderheims or Taggerts get what they need and decide they like their store better.”

“One other thing about physics” Abigail continued “is that we are trained to think in probability clouds. Heisenberg and all that. We use math to think about the probability of an electron existing in an alpha wave-form around a nuclei versus a beta wave-form.”

“Making one easy decision per unit has to be better than making seven hard ones.”

John got excited.

“One of the things I learned today is that the schedulers always run a low-option quick-to-build product before a high-option, very profitable unit. Since the new product is smoking hot in the market place, they are all maxed out for options since the dealers will take any product we produced.”

“That means that the new product takes more than 30 feet of line to build. The hot ticket would be to place the one-stop-shopping for the new model at the very start of the station so the operator has the maximum amount of time to build the toughest product.”

The next morning Paula and Matthias listened to Snodgrass’s proposed solution.

Paula called somebody on her cell. “Malichi, can you come to the stand-up next to column J-19?”

“Ok, see you in a minute”

In less than a minute a corpulent man riding a “tugger” pulled up to the stand-up and stepped off. Snodgrass was taken aback. Even Paula walked. This guy rated a tugger.

“Whaddya need” Malichi asked.

“Tell him” Paula commanded.

Snodgrass outlined all of the advantages of having the racks rearranged so operators walked up to a specific location along the length of the pick-face and pulled the parts specific for the next unit they were going to build. It seemed absolutely bullet-proof to Snodgrass and he said as much.

“Ain’t gonna happen” Malichi said, dismissively. “Every operator has to sign-on and I guarantee that none of the operators in Material Delivery will sign any changes to the station layout!”

Snodgrass frowned. “I understand that operators don’t like change but I think I can convince the people installing the parts that this is a much better system”

“I ain’t talking about them. I am talking about the Material Delivery operators” Malichi said.

Snodgrass was lost. “They aren’t operators” he objected.

“They sure are” Malichi said, bristling. “The contract says that anybody who physically touches parts is an operator and my people touch the parts.”

“Next time you get some bright idea, you might want to talk to somebody who knows what is going on before you go shooting your dumb-ass mouth off” Malichi said as he hopped on his tugger and left.

Snodgrass was shocked. The last thing he expected was to be stymied by another member of Management.

He looked over at Mattias and asked “Is he right? Does the contract say that anybody who touches a part is an operator?”

Matthias nodded. “I will give you a copy of the local contract tomorrow morning. But what he said is the truth. Any hourly worker who touches parts in the normal course of their job is considered an operator and any changes to the station must be signed off by every operator.”

Snodgrass looked over at Paula.

“It is not a bad solution. Figure out how to make it work” Paula said.

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