A Failure to Communicate

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

A Failure to Communicate

We have the worse communication. No wonder that we are losing business. As I had stated before one of the first orders of business for me at this company was to set up procedures that documented our work orders excreta. It was then decided not to implement it because it actually held people responsible, including the owners family, for their actions. Since they view themselves as gods and they can do as they dam well please they will not be held responsible for their own action. That is what they own employees for, to take the blame. I am not good at taking blame for something that I have no control over and I don’t keep my mouth shut.

The issue:

I designed two parts for Batesville Casket Company for developing a new way to install theses parts that will save Batesville money. The reasoning by our company is that if we can show them that this will work then Batesville will buy off on it and give us the contract to produce them. The job has the potential of one million dollars plus a year business. So I built a prototype tools to produce the samples.

The tool was built oversize because the plastic part shrinks as it cools. The tools were build with this shrink factor. The parts worked as planed and everyone should be happy. As I said should be. But you can’t make these people happy.

The Problem: Now we want to get an aluminum cast tool to go into production. We produce a pattern for the foundry to cast the production tool. The pattern needs to be larger to compensate for the shrink of the aluminum in their casting process. The owner wants to know why these prototype tooling wasn’t made to a pattern size. Sometimes we do this when the prototypes can be oversize of the production parts but in this case we needed to prove fits and concepts. The owner himself says to do it as a prototype tool and that is what I did. He said it with witnesses and they backed me up. That made him angrier to be told that he was wrong.

So now we are in a mad rush to get these tools changed to get to the foundry. They are expected to be shipped by Friday. Now I need 2-3 days to re-machine them and then they go to the tool room to finish and they need 2-3 days. This is Wednesday and they are still sitting in the press. It is up to the owner’s son (the plant manager) to get them pulled so that I can work on them. So little god can not chew gun and walk at the same time and he is tied up with something else. He isn’t even the one that has to pull it, just tell the set-up Mexican to do it.

Now I have been waiting for it to get out of the press so that I can work on it. When it is then they will try to hold me responsible for it not being on time. If we simply had followed the procedures that had been laid out then there would not have been this failure to communicate.

Competing against the world and with all the other issues of doing business today is very difficult and requires professionals and good communications. We just don’t have either.