Opencircuits

Saving money is a fine thing for a company to do. Cost savings affect the bottom line. That’s obvious to anyone who really looks at it. But are there limits to the lengths a company should go to save money? We thought we surpassed that limit at Mr. Z’s company.

Someone concluded that the engineers were spending too much money on pencils. Someone was going to have to take action and put an end to pencil waste. I’m talking about good old #2 pencils that cost a whopping couple of cents apiece. We always had to go to the engineering secretary and ask for a pencil. Nobody was allowed more than one. And if you’d been there recently, you’d get a dirty look and maybe a question or two about why you needed another pencil already. When the program started to save money on pencils, it got worse.

One day, we heard from Harry, one of the better engineers in the group that he had to sign for a new pencil. They were going to find out who was responsible for all of the pencil waste. There was a log sheet right next to where the secretary kept the stock of pencils. She wouldn’t give one out until you signed your name. It was quite frustrating, but people kind of resigned themselves to it after a while.

After a few weeks, it got worse. Not only did we have to sign the log sheet every time we got a new pencil, they required us to turn in the old pencil and it was measured to ensure that the old one was really used up. If it was longer than 2 inches, we were told to keep using it until it was used up. That was especially difficult for Harry, since he sat next to what was the only phone in the area for 28 engineers. People would take calls at his desk and walk away with his pencil. Nobody would confess to having stolen his pencil, so he’d have to trek over and beg for a new one. When they required him to sign and turn in an old pencil, he would not have one to turn in, so he’d get an extra long lecture.

Several engineers got upset and didn’t want to deal with the indignity of asking, signing, and having their old pencil measured, so they went and bought their own mechanical pencils. The fact that fewer people were getting pencils didn’t make the process for getting replacements any easier. Some of the engineers that bought mechanical pencils decided to lobby for the company to buy lead. Nobody asked them to buy mechanical pencils, just to supply the lead. Several months went by and they finally agreed that they would buy lead.

The big day arrived when the lead was available. The secretary called down to our work area and let someone know that we could come over and get lead. A few of us walked over and sure enough she had a supply. The first guy in line held out his hand expecting a package of lead. No, that’s not what they had in mind. She opened the package and gave him exactly one lead. Everyone was shocked. We all got handed one lead and turned around to leave. As we were walking out, she called us back.

She said, “You guys need to sign for those.”

We turned around and sure enough, she had a piece of paper all set up for signatures for every piece of lead distributed. We signed and left. As far as I know, nobody ever went back and asked for more.

Time for another story about Mr. Z, the most frugal company owner I’ve ever met. He would always claim to ‘care’ about the older neighborhoods in town. Most employees suspected that he cared because he was able to buy buildings cheaper in those neighborhoods. He owned four buildings in one general area of town, all of which were older and had seen better days. The company was growing and Mr. Z needed to expand into a ‘new’ building.

Around that time, the state was looking for a site to build a prison. They decided that they wanted to find a location in an area from which a lot of inmates came. It would make it easier on their families to visit them and may have helped with their rehabilitation. They found a building in the worst area of town that had previously been occupied by an insurance company. After some study, the state determined that the building was unsuitable for a prison. When a building in that kind of area is determined to be unsuitable for serving as a prison, its economic value hits about as close to zero as possible. And that would suit Mr. Z just fine.

Sure enough, Mr. Z bought that building for next to nothing and announced that it would serve as the company international headquarters. People were unhappy to say the least. We moved there and had cars burgularized or stolen on an almost daily basis. Employee morale wasn’t so good, but that wasn’t the only issue. It was pretty hard to get work done there, because the building had insufficient electrical capacity to get our work done. We had a lot of test equipment and heavy loads in the labs that weren’t required by the insurance company that previously occupied the place. We were having circuit breakers trip all day long and people had to go to the basement to turn power back on. Mr. Z got some electrical contractors out to see if they could change to higher current rated breakers. He was unhappy with the prices quoted, so he came up with another solution.

Mr. Z came into work inspired one day. He bought a huge fan and had the facilities crew set it up right next to the breaker panel. He had them open the access door and had the fan blowing right on the breakers. The problem with the tripping breakers was mostly solved for a fraction of the cost of rewiring. The only issue was what would happen when the fire marshall came at inspection time. That was no problem either. The company had several top secret military projects going on. Whenever the fire marshall showed up, he was told that he could not access the building as he had no security clearance. It was a stalling technique, as he had accessed the previous buildings the company occupied. But while the access issue was ‘sorted out’ while the marshall was in the company lobby, word was spread amongst the labs and equipment was turned off to a minimal level. Then the big fan was put away and the breaker access doors closed. The fire marshall would find nothing and when he was finished, things would quickly get back to ‘normal.’ In retrospect, it’s amazing to me that nobody ever made an anonymous call to the fire marshall and let him know what was really going on.

We had a copy machine in the engineering building that everyone hated. It was terribly slow, always made terrible copies, and broke down a lot. But it was the only machine in the area, so it got plenty of use. Everyone could tell whenever they got a copy that originated from that machine, because at the very best, it would have stripes of excess toner. We were lobbying to get a new copier and were led to believe it would happen “soon.”

We were pretty curious when we started getting all kinds of questions about toner consumption for that copier. A few people asked everyone in our building how often the toner cartridge got changed. Everyone in the building got asked at least 3 times. We figured maybe they were planning on getting rid of the copier by justifying cost of toner in addition to the poor copies and downtime. After a few days, we were told that we would not be getting a new copier and we’d have to live with what we had.

A few weeks later, the real story started to trickle out. We found out that we somehow had several years worth of cartridges in inventory for that copier. When we asked why that was, the questions quickly got brushed aside. It took a few weeks, but we eventually got the full story.

We somehow ended up with around 8 years worth of toner for that machine and there was no way that machine would have lasted 8 years. The toner was not purchased through the usual channels. The company receptionist bought all of the toner and the vendor who sold it to her was paid via expense checks. To top it off, the toner cartridges purchased through these nefarious means cost a mere 20x what they cost going through the normal suppliers.
The receptionist did well for herself in getting that to happen. The salesman gave her a microwave oven, a toaster oven, and a few other gifts. When everything came to light, she should have been immediately fired, but alas that did not happen. The company president declared that she wasn’t smart enough to have known what she did was wrong and the company had no gift policy in place. They quickly wrote up and distributed a gift policy and the receptionist went on to get a special job as an “assistant to the president” a couple of years later.

For a year or so afterward, we’d have engineering meetings and people would usually bring in copies made on our favorite machine. Almost invariably, someone would mention the excess toner marks on the papers. I never heard what happened to the stock of extra cartridges that never got used after the copier gave up the ghost.

It’s pretty well understood that companies need to find ways to save money. Good times or bad, it really doesn’t matter. Money not spent does not come off of the bottom line. Mr. Z definitely understood that, but he regularly took it to levels that employees could not believe.

Mr. Z hated to buy office furniture. Whatever we had was old and had seen better days. Nobody complained about that part too much, because we were always happy to have a desk. All requisitions for everything had to get approved. Anything over pretty small amounts by most company standards had to get approved by Mr. Z. Whenever anyone turned in a requisition for a new desk, it was over the ‘Mr. Z’ threshold and the reqs went to him and invariably got turned down.

Mr. Z had a habit of wandering around the buildings and surprising people. When someone had the audacity to turn in a req for a desk, that wasn’t a good day to be on vacation or out sick. Mr. Z would immediately state that we didn’t need to buy any desks. The company had plenty of desks. He’d wander around the bulding until he saw a desk with no one sitting at it. He’d ask, “Who sits there?” Someone would mention who sat there and he’d reply, “He doesn’t need a desk.”

A few minutes later, the facilities guys would be there hauling the desk away and giving it to the department that turned in a desk requisition. When the poor person would return to work, they’d find their desk gone. Since Mr. Z had declared that the person who lost the desk didn’t need one, they wouldn’t have the courage to turn in a new requisition for another desk. They’d have to wait until someone quit and covertly move that person’s desk. Luckily, that meant they usually didn’t have to wait too long, since people quit their jobs pretty regularly at that place as Mr. Z wasn’t so generous with raises either.

David was a new hire. He showed up one day and was assigned to the quality department as a test technician. Something seemed funny about the whole situation, since he hadn’t been interviewed, nobody had seen a job application, there was no advertised opening, and his new bosses had no idea they were going to get a new employee. He just showed up ready to work wearing a three piece suit. To say he was overdressed would have been an understatement. The other quality techs wore jeans and t-shirts, but David was obviously special.

David only lasted a week in his new job. Someone declared that he was some kind of a genius and needed to be promoted into the engineering department. We never heard who made that declaration, but within a few minutes, he picked up his few belongings, jumped into his car and drove over to the building where the engineering department was located.

We were hard at work writing a proposal for new business and were told to get David’s help. If he’d just get his hands on the technical write-ups, we’d win the business for sure. David had no idea what we were doing and was unfamiliar with our products, our methods, or how proposals were written, but he was given sections to write and he got right to it. He was still wearing his three piece suits every day and was overdressed compared to the engineers, but not as obviously as he was as a test tech.

The proposal took a couple of weeks to complete. Lots of extra hours were required, most of which were not worked by David. That didn’t seem to matter as once the proposal was completed, David was declared to be some kind of a genius yet again. His work on the proposal was declared to be some of the best ever done and again we had no idea who made the declaration. It was determined that David needed to be promoted again and he was assigned to the program management office. David packed up his belongings and moved downstairs.
In the history of the company, no one had ever gone from a test tech to engineer to program manager over the course of a career yet David did so in three weeks. It was obvious to everyone that he had some special qualifications. A few weeks later, we found out what ‘special qualifications’ he had. Turns out he was Mr. Z’s nephew. Mr. Z happened to own the company.

Several times over the years, I’ve been told to fix a design but was given the additional instruction not to change anything. I’ve always responded with a question, “How do you fix a broken design without changing anything?”

The answer has always been a little grumbling about changing some component values but not to change the circuit topology. I’ve never seen a single instance when it was possible to fix a broken design via component value changes.

The worst example of this I ever had to work on was a display that had to work over the military temperature range of -55 C to +85 C. There was a temperature drift that was so bad that rendered the thing useless at all but a small range of the specified operating temperature. It would work fine in an air conditioned lab, but when placed in the temperature chamber, the picture would disappear completely at cold temperatures and would go completely white when hot. It didn’t get tested over temperature until it was way too late and when that problem was discovered, I was given that old instruction:
“Fix it, but don’t change it.”

The video signal chain went through three high speed op amps. The temperature drift of the first amplifier got multiplied by the remaining amplifiers. In a simple worst case analysis, it turned out that the drift from just the first amplifier was enough to run the output amplifier to its rails. That wasn’t possible to fix by changing components. Over 200 cuts & jumpers later, the thing got fixed. It worked out fantastic for the company, but I got a good scolding for making ‘too many changes.” I sarcastically asked how many changes would have been acceptable and didn’t get any better answer to that than when I asked how to fix a broken design without making changes.

It seems that in every company, there’s an empire builder or two. Or more. That was never more evident than one time when the quality department demanded that everything get inspected regardless of how the material was going to be used. The company where I worked had a design center located around 90 miles away from most of the operations. They were very proud of that design center and made it clear that the future of the company depended on successful ideas getting developed there.

One of the initial projects they worked on was an RF transmission system. They needed a very expensive spool of coax cable for some preliminary testing. The purchasing people ordered the coax as requested and then the ‘quality’ department got involved. Lots of meetings, lots of angry phone calls, and lots of grousing went on. They demanded that the spool of cable get delivered to the main receiving location where it could go through the normal inspection process. After no small amount of politicking, that’s what happened.

It turned out to not be such a great idea. The first problem was that the spool was bigger than the ‘quality’ people anticipated. It was so big that it wouldn’t fit through the door. The union truck driver who delivered was unconcerned about that and dropped it off. It sat on the ground outside while all kinds of arrangements were made to get it shipped to the design center. It took a couple of days for that to happen. The funniest thing was that the cable never did get inspected.

Dr. P was one of those bosses who thought the answer to any problem was more pressure. A little rant, some random screaming, and a meeting to really enforce his points would solve any kind of a problem. It got to be comical from time to time.

It was a week before Christmas and we were working on a hot project. We were handcuffed by a lack of test equipment. We had one particular piece of equipment that was necessary for us to get any testing done, which was out for repair. Dr. P held one of his famous meetings where he was going to ‘get things done’ by really ranting and bearing down on the engineers. He asked why we hadn’t made any optical measurements. I let him know that we were still waiting for the test equipment.

Dr. P wasn’t about to take that for an answer. He screamed at me, “Go down and talk to Glen and find out why we don’t have that equipment.”

Glen was the guardian of that equipment and he was the one who had told me prior to the meeting that it was out for repair. I dutifully went down and asked Glen again when we might expect to see the equipment. He sighed and let me know that it was being shipped via UPS and would show up when it showed up. This was back in the day before you could look up tracking numbers on the UPS website.

I walked back upstairs and let Dr. P know that it was on a UPS truck and would show up when it arrived. Dr. P exploded in anger. He screamed, “You go back down and tell Glen to get UPS to get that equipment here NOW.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing but went back down to talk to Glen. I told him that I was merely a messenger boy, but that Dr. P wanted him to get UPS to deliver quicker. Glen had a good laugh and I went back upstairs to my desk. A few minutes later, Glen called and let me know that UPS had delivered the equipment and to come and get it.

I let Dr. P know that the equipment had arrived and he gave me a big lecture letting me know ‘that’s how you get things done around here.’ He went on and on letting me know that you have to put pressure on the little people and never take no for an answer. I did learn something, but it had more to do with Dr. P’s state of mind than it had to do with how to get work done.