Hi Mary, Sounds like the one. Very passionate about quality and process. I made a jocular remark when he was first introduced as being in charge of quality control for the whole factory, saying something along the lines of how I guessed the factory folks were on their toes when he walked through, and he launched into a sermon on the notion that we were all a team working towards the same goal. Very charismatic guy. BTW, another thing that really struck me in the parts section of the factory, having to do with organization of tasks, was that the "cells" really went from start to almost finish. IOW, damper underlevers went from moldings, felt, springs to finished assemblies with spaced and travelled underlevers. Similarly, the shanks, hammers and wipps areas went from the same starting point to action frames with hammers hung and spaced (to jigs corresponding to engineered string spacing) and pretty well pre-travelled. So the lowly flange busher is either rubbing shoulders with the traveller and spacer, or is the same person. Not just making a part to put in a box to send elsewhere, but seeing how it works, and responsible for making it work (to a point). Another result is that the "finish" folks (the ones who do increasingly final regulation, voicing, etc) start with a pretty nice foundation - an action already assembled, and within fairly fine specs. So that "circles of refinement" are built into the system. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico --On Tuesday, October 28, 2003 8:34 AM -0600 Mary Smith <MarySmith@mail.utexas.edu> wrote: > Fred, > > Was it John Merrick, by any chance? He is a machinist by training, and > helped Michael Mohr with all the retooling. I met him last fall when I > was up there, and he is a rotund, jolly, and all together competent > fellow that impressed the hell out of me, too. I told him he was a > walking, talking advertisement for S&S's recommitment to quality. Great > person. > > Mary > >> >> > >> Nope, it wasn't Michael Mohr. I would have remembered that name. This >> guy was in charge of the action portion of the factory at that time >> (1994), and was in >> the process of replacing the fancy machines (the ones you put moldings >> in one end, and out come shanks, flanges, repetition levers, or whatever >> from the other >> end), and in reorganizing the work flow in accordance with more modern >> factory concepts. > > -- > _______________________________________________ > caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
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