Imagine a world where mining is over. All metals are available only as scrap. New cars are assembled (even rockets are assembled) obtaining components from, say, rejected cars. Like assembly plants, there are now numerous dismembering plants. I, William Livergall, am a Factory Manager in charge of one of them, an employee of Future Body Inc.
Like in an assembly plant, here the rejected products - cars, machineries, metal utility items - move steadily along rails at a predetermined speed. Workers in their stations take apart designated components. These components are shipped to other assembly plants. In our case it is to another Hightech vehicle assembly plant of ours, to which we are the feeder plant.
As a manager, my goals are to ensure steady procurement, smooth movement, adequate dismembering teams (some of whom cut/unscrew, some lubricate and some clean before despatch) and maximum conversion. Items remaining on the rails at the end should ideally be totally useless. Components shipped to the Hightech facility should be ready to use.
The biggest challenge that compromises process quality, is the Procurement Manager, John Sugarspice. His procurement goals seem to be based on colour of item, sound of metal, something novel, something bought in mammoth quantities because it is available cheap - in short quite at variance from my line goals. Consequently, there are a lot of unusable/unused components that are scrapped again in the end. Or the item has many rusty parts that make them difficult to dismember and clean. Or the line becomes overloaded - I sometimes have to load two cars in the slot meant for one - much to the disgust of my crew members, who either have to leave much of it untouched, or they have to dismember bigger chunks rather than individual components. These chunks, when shipped to the Hightech facility, lies there unused, straining their storage facility, to be broken down and utilised only if they run out of components.
Personally, I prefer loading simpler assemblies because they can be dismembered faster. But John prefers complex assemblies like small cars, enamored by their earlier road performance and looks.
My line needs maintenance downtime. Online maintenance has its limits and I prefer to hold back loading fresh items in order to repair the rails and give the teams some breathing space. But our great Mr Sugarspice still quietly loads the line and there we go again, limping along.
Overall, line health suffers because of the stupid Procurement Manager.
I have taken up the matter with our CEO, David Frontlobe, again and again and although he agrees in principle, somehow he turns out helpless in front of the procurement zeal of our dear John. However, I noticed that once our CEO turned 60, he started paying more attention to me rather than to John. Hope he had done it earlier.
My friends, our digestive system is a complex piece of work. It knows what needs to go in to convert to a healthy body. So please do not let the tongue rule your brain. Healthy food habits need to start young.
