It seemed that after the Bryant acquisition in 2002, our forward momentum slowed over time. The task of organizing all the various parts of the product line overwhelmed us. The Project Engineer was required to follow the new MRP computer system when building the various Bills of Material; any new item on this document had to have its own unique part number entered into the Master List. To complicate things further, if any mistakes were made entering these numbers (I.E. a misplaced or missing digit), another entry would have to be made with the correct number. The incorrect / wrong number could not be deleted, and this one fact would cause us all kinds of problems down the road.

A short discussion concerning items on our Bills of Material: in our very early meetings on how to list various items on these  lists, it was decided to:                                  1). Continue to use our in-house part numbering system for manufactured parts (“VR” numbers); for the most part, these items would have an actual drawing or spec sheet with any necessary information for manufacture.                                                                     2). Use manufacturers part numbers for purchased items such as seals, bearings, etc., and enter these numbers directly into the MRP database without any supporting drawings.                                                                                                                                                 3). Integrate all the existing Bryant part numbers for manufactured parts into the system.

It did not take long to see just what kind of a mess we were getting into.                        1). Our in-house numbers would be no problem, as they were unique to us.                      2). The manufacturers part numbers would be tricky to use if we were not careful in entering them into the system. A lot of these numbers were very long.                                3). The Bryant numbers would be, for the most part, no problem.

Writing all the various Bills of Material for each order was usually done by the assigned Project Engineer. A complete machine build document might include 30 or 40 BOM’s. If there were any items that were “Long Lead” (those that had a long delivery time), the Project Engineer would release a “Preliminary” BOM to quickly get these items on order. This BOM would undergo numerous updates as the project advanced. Our periodic meetings would, hopefully, point out any problems that had to be addressed to keep the project on time.

The Shop Foreman had oversight on which mechanics were working on each project, and he would usually attend our meetings. There were always interruptions on the assembly floor to the schedule, sometimes they were legitimate (as sending a mechanic for a service call), sometimes at the whim of management (as when snap decisions were made and Management failed to tell the Foreman). The mechanics were caught in the middle on these occasions.