Quote:
Originally Posted by bergy
My experience in production (not at Norwood) is that employees would “double up” by one person covering 2 jobs while the other employee took a break. If an employee just walked off and left his work totally omitted, it would bring rain from the foreman. When I was a foreman, another employee in the area (usually a relief or utility man) would jump in & let me know right away. Letting people “double up” on line jobs was never officially authorized, but it was recognized that it happened. If a foreman really clamped down and didn’t allow any of it, the line workers wouldn't automatically fill in for each other at start of shift if several employees were absent. The relief men and utility men were there at startup to help also, but on Monday mornings, if I didn’t allow any doubling up during the shift - the line would be a mess. One hand washed the other within reason.
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This is absolutely correct.
I had 27 or so production operations with about 35 hourly employees. I could do every one of those jobs, and could do more than one for a short period of time, so if things were really (really!) desperate I could hop on and keep the line going.
I do not recall stopping the line myself in 40 years, even though it was pretty lonely at 5:55 am. Often it was me, my quality man and a couple of your "good" guys waiting around with me wringing my hands. When the line started at 6am it would chug about one job length and stop (somebody else would have pulled the cord because they were short staffed). Usually while everybody was getting situated I'd see the rest of my guys quick stepping down the aisle, tying their aprons on and catching up.
By the time the line started back up my guys had done the vehicle they missed, the one directly in front of them, plus one more, and were sitting on their stool reading the newspaper.
This was in the late 1970's/early 80's and I would have been about 19 or 20 years old at the time.
K