Quote:
Originally Posted by Cole
I don't blame the line people for not telling you how bad a piece of equipment is though. I'd be worried to make mention of something like that.
I remember back in my factory days, we had a robot arm come in, and what it did was take a raw piece, put it into a lathe, and take it out. When it came to my work station, I spent more time troubleshooting the damn thing than it would have taken for me to just do the operation myself. My superiors were so proud of it that I was afraid to speak up about it.
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They normally are very good about telling us stuff since we really encourage it and act when we can. I walk each plant at least twice a day when I am at them (look for my posting time gaps) and ask most of the guys if they have any issues. Some days there are none and some days several but everybody knows I will listen and pass on the concerns to whoever can fix it or tell them why it is the way it is and why it can't be changed. This is sort of a different situation though since we are just starting up the plant and ramping up the line speeds. It wasn't really a big deal to them until this week when we hit 50% of the goal production rate.
I had another $60K worth of equipment pulled and replaced by much simpler tools before we even started up production. The equipment design and manufacturer had a tendency to over engineer everything and make it far more complex then the task required (since they make more money that way). In the other cases they went beyond the drawings that I had approved so the money came out of their pocket but the one today looked great on paper and in theory and since I approved the plan we will eat the cost on it. Can't win 'em all.