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Donegan’s drive. The author of this article is an 89-year-old mechanical and electrical engineer. He describes events in an environment of several decades ago, when work study and operational research were displlacing older, intuitive styles of management. But it is essentially a human story, with corresponding lessons for today’s environment. It should be read with that in mind.

by Leonard A. Williams

onegan was Works Manager for an engineering firm of a type that used to be common enough in Britain, and

there are still some in existence, namely, the ‘jobbing shop’. Jobbing shops like Donegan’s firm make products which are, as it were, tailor- made (in American jargon ‘custom-built’), one at a time, each having distinctive features from others of its kind, and, on occasion, individual units being totally different one from another.

It might be guessed that Donegan was Irish to the marrow and it showed. He was a competent engineer and had served his time in a shipyard, but he had crossed the Irish Sea in the belief that there were better opportunities of advancement in Britain’s industrial North than in his native Ulster. In engineering terms he was successful. O n the strength of his record during and after apprenticeship, he got himself a shopfloor job with a large firm in the North of England, and soon brought his other talents to bear on the situation. Donegan had kissed the Blarney Stone, without a shadow of doubt. Among his mates it was murmured that, not only could he tallk the hind leg off a donkey, but also that donkeys knew it and kept their distance.

He was blessed with an athletic build and was a good performer at most ball games. He was big-framed, andl had strong features, and he could turn on the charm with the broadest of smiles to win his point in almost any discussion. Donegan never seemed to disagree with you. Immediately you had started your point of view he beamed at you expansively, his firm white teeth glinted, and as he declared firmly,

‘Exactly!’, you felt that you had put your point well. It would be some time later that you were liable to discover that Donegan had sighed, ‘Exactly!’ to some diametrically opposed point of view, and that you had somehow agreed to exactly what he wanted, with your blessing.

In no time at all, it seemed, Donegan graduated to the level of charge hand, then foreman, and then shop superintendent. Here he was in his element, haindling men on the shop floor for whose activities he was responsible. He smoothed out deficiencies where there was a clash of personalities, mollifying the disgruntled, encouraging those who had not yet properly realised their potential, and reporting smilingly to his management on any and every problem that came his way, in a manner which endeared him at least to those in his immediate chain of command.

In addition to his charm and his technical competence, Donegan hLad considerable drive. This served to mask the fact that, whilst he understood engineering, and had a happy knack of coming across well to his sub- ordinates, his ideas on organisation were virtually non-existent. If a group became disgruntled Donegan would drop whatever he was doing, and join in the discussion on the shop floor. He would charm the men into thinking that their jobs and grievances were top priority in his mind, and he would persuade them to carry on. Through a quiet word to their foreman he would let it be known unofficially that, if they were really obstinate, they might well find their jobs disappearing. So, if, for example, the tinsmiths were dissatisfied, they

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Donegan hadkissed the Blarney Stone.. .

succumbed to his charm, but got a private indication from their chargehand that the firm was thinking of subcontracting all tinkering work. If work was not suitable for sub- contracting, the workers got special bonus payments, which Donegan got management to accept as necessary, by turning on the charm. His energy was boundless; he was here, there and everywhere, and in due season, succeeded to the post of Works Manager.

With customers who became restive at delays in completion of the contracts they had confided to the firm and insisted on seeing for themselves what was happening, Donegan really spread himself. His staff produced elaborate charts to show that the delays were really the fault of material suppliers or due to lightning strikes or changes in customers’ own specifications, in fact, anything except poor organisation. Before a customer had had time to digest fully the implications of the information that was put before him, he would be whisked off to a sumptuous luncheon party with Donegan and a few colleagues, with Donegan himself in the chair, dispensing liquor liberally before and during the meal. Few grievances got very far off the ground in subsequent discussion but, if it proved absolutely necessary to avoid cancellation of the contract or total loss of goodwill, Donegan would reschedule the customer’s work so that all other contracts slipped back in delivery while the single project got top priority. It was upsetting to his superintendents, but Donegan had not kissed the Blarney Stone for nothing.

It was his habit of substituting improvisation for organisation that brought him constantly up against Macnair. Donegan and Macnair had only one thing in common, namely they were Celts, but of different varieties, as Macnair was

a Scot. Macnair could never have brought himself to kiss the Blarney Stone. He was a man given to much thinking, and much less speech, and it would not have occurred to him to expect that any weight would attach to his views other than through the force of their logic. The very idea that a man’s opinion could be buttressed by anything like his charm of manner would have been anathema to him, if indeed he had ever considered this aspect, but it i s doubtful if it ever occurred to him.

Macnair was also an engineer, but his basic motivation was an urgent desire to ‘know’. Whatever way a task was performed Macnair wanted to know why it was done that way and, naturally he took unkindly to arbitrary directives. To an extent, this had been a hindrance to his progress in a number of posts. He had started as a research engineer, but became disenchanted at being given only a general outline of the projects he was to pursue, with inadequate background as to the real objectives. He felt himself to be little more than a glorified lab boy and soon turned his attention elsewhere.

Macnair got himself a post in engineering design and development, where he felt a little more at home, with a certain amount of freedom to exercise his talents. Soon, however, he was made very much aware of the fact that first principles were all too often translated into arbitrary instructions, which were not to be found in the design manual. They had to be rooted out of special files in which the Chief Designer’s amendments to the manual were kept in chronological order. In any technical problem situation which was not covered by the manual, therefore, a designer had to search diligently through the files for guidance, and, even when he had found a pertinent instruction, it was rarely supported by any justification from first principles or experiments, nor was there any clue as to the reasoning underlying any tolerances or safety factors which were specified. This did not suit Macnair at all; he wanted to dig deeper, and he was much happier when he was concerned with development work, where he was, in truth, setting up precisely the same sort of instructions for others, as had proved so irksome for himself.

Now Macnair’s ideas went well beyond the strict confines of engineering design, and it was not long before he started questioning the way things were done, in such areas as planning, production control, stockholding, costing and marketing. After some years with partial

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investment in these areas, Macnair was able to move in on the crest of the boom in operational research. His management decided that there was some scopi~ for it, and he was given the task of heading a team to see how it could be used to raise efficiency at various levels. This suited Macnair well enough but, naturally, brought him into head-on collision with those who, like Donegan, never gave organisational matters more than an occasional moment’s thought. ‘After all’, as Donegan was apt to argue with himself (and even with other people), ‘if you have a good team, with plenty of drive, there is nothing, but nothing, in the nature of a problem that will not yield to their united efforts’.

Macnair, naturally enough, was sceptical, and clung to his view that logic was the only possible approach, and that

the resource requireinents and the times involved. Networks for projects in hand could be merged so that manufacturing times were realistic and the capacity of the factory was clearly discernible. The impact of localised difficulties of resource could be assessed for all projects, and some attempt made to identify particular resources which were insufficient, and proving to be bottlenecks. Macnair and his teain were well aware that the first necessity was to make sure that they could correctly simulate what was happening at any time; then they were in a position to use their routine in a productive way.

The basic document which the team used in building up their record of work location and movement was a ‘Stirling slip’, so-called

because it had been devised everything else was second- ary. Nevertheless, Donegan could not avoid Macnair, and Macnair could not avoid Donegan. They had to get together, or at least put on a show of intelligent discus- sion and joint effort, and the principal area they discussed was work scheduling. Donegan’s interest was to find a way to avoid taking . .

by a firm called Stirling f which made commercial

stationery and business systems. The movement of a piece of work from one activiry centre to another necessitated the makine of an ” entry on a slip. Thus if a piece of electrical plant involved a rotor, the movement of the rotor from the machine shop to the winding shop could

. . I_ .. responsibility jor errors in the assessment of factory capacity, and for unexpected delays in completion of contracts. He was all in favour of someone else being the scapegoat. Macnair was very much concerned in terms of company image; he could visualise and even put a figure on the true cost to business of a bad image with customers. One would have thought that Donegan and Macnair would have sufficient in common to get on like a house on fire, whereas their relationship was more like that of an arsonist and the chief of the fire brigade.

With the knowledge, agreement and supposed co-operation of Donegan, Macnair’s team painstakingly built up a simulated basis for the scheduling of all contracts, so that intelligent overall planning could be done. A computer routine was devised so that the position could be kept up to date automatically and results presented in immediately assimil- able form, on demand. Every task, however small, was identified and its place in the whole operation defincd in terms of the demand that it made on resources; the project was then portrayed as a network of subtasks, showing

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require the raising of a slip showing that the operation

in the machine shop had been completed, and that the rotor was moved to assembly, on a specified date.

Times required for the various operations were obtained by Macnair’s team from ratefixers, whose records were the basis of estimated times for pieceworkers, so that, from the slips and the ratefixers, times of actual operations and times of movement were available. Macnair also got some independent verification, by ‘random’ studies of factory activity. This involved his team making sufficient spot checks in any location or on any machine, to be able to establish the pattern of true working time, compared with the time available, and the relative importance and practical nature of various causes of holdup. This exercise showed that working time, generally, was quite a high percentage of available time, so that there was not much ‘slack’ which could be pulled in to raise efficiency. Also, results agreed quite well with ratefixers’ figures.

Macnair decided that the foundation of his

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team’s work was sound and he urged their work on until he felt ready to show Donegan the nature and importance of the organisational tool that he had devised. So, talung a number of critical areas of activity such as the machine shop and the assembly shop, his team produced charts showing their results, first, as a historical record of the past year, second the position in the current month, and third, a projection for one year ahead. The charts were displayed on the walls of the company conference room, and Donegan was invited to come to examine them and discuss the findings and future programme of work. He focused his attention on the current month’s situation, then on the past vear’s Dattern of work load. His face creased into one of his broadest smiles tinged perhaps with a certain amount of contempt.

‘I’m not sure that I know what your charts are supposed to be showing me’, he said with a leer at Macnair and his team. ‘They certainly don’t show anything that’s happening now. For instance, on our largest contract, the Australian job,

Macnair allowed the meeting to break up, in complete disgust, realising perhaps for the first time, than any sense of organisation that he might have attributed to Donegan was far from being merited, and that attempts on his part to establish any sort of organisation framework in Donegan’s province were doomed to failure. But worse was to come. Prior to Macnair’s appointment as head of operational research the firm which had sold a computer to the company had also persuaded Donegan to adopt, for stock control purposes, a ‘package system’, which was claimed to be of general application.

Hitherto, stocks had been controlled by a simple manual system which required a few.clerks who

On major recorded rather laboriously all stock movement, and, in taking decisions to reorder a

instructions that stocks, they had recourse to the Chief Stock Controller and the storekeepers, who relied on their experience. This manual system had been

were his Til by word

reasonably successful for Of mouth and not several years, and the

recorded anywhere measure of success was that the average number of stock

you show this as the major load on the machine shop, and due to be the main item in assembly next month. But that simply isn’t the case’.

Macnair looked at his team, and one of them, Brent, who had led the work programme, volunteered: ‘I don’t think Macnair would be familiar with all the details, so perhaps I should say that I can remember the Stirling slips which showed the Australian job just entered machine shop this week, so that’s where it must be’.

Donegan’s smile broadened. ‘What’s all this about Stirling slips?’, he inquired, wonderingly. ‘The job’s just through machine shop; I’ve seen to it personally’.

This was only the beginning. Discussion soon revealed that, despite giving lip service to the routine involving the Stirling slips, Donegan made no effort to enforce its use, and caused it to be sidetracked too often for it to have any meaning whatsoever. In fact, he regarded it as a nuisance. O n major contracts, at least, the only instructions that mattered, and what contributed to workshop loading, were his own, given by word of mouth, and not recorded anywhere in his office, or as far as he knew, anywhere.

shortagesreported daily was in single figures. The computer ‘package system’ had been run alongside the existing system for a few months without any major discrepancies being detected and this persuaded Donegan that he could safely dispense with his manual system and most of the clerks, and sell the various items of equipment, so he took the necessary steps. Then his troubles began.

The average number of daily stockouts rose steadily, and, a month or two later, when Macnair set up his operational research team, the number was well on the way to a hundred, so that, when he got round to looking at the problem, the Chief Stock Controller was rapidly losing his cool, and Donegan was at a complete loss to know how to deal with the situation. He appealed to Macnair to make a thorough appraisal of the package routine that had been ‘sold’ to him by the computer makers, and Macnair perceived at once that it was seriously at fault in two respects.

First and foremost, it was not even necessary to use the rather high-flown statistical concepts that it was based on. For the sort of contracts that the firm handled, there was really ample time from receipt of order, to prepare designs,

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drawings and lists of materials and components, and get delivery of these so as to manufacture by the date scheduled for completion. Stock control on a statistical basis using a computer was clearly no more than an expedient to dodge the real issue, which lay in ensuring that the engineering departments did their work at the proper time. A secondary fault was that the re- ordering routine was based on the general idea that history was a guide to the current stock requirement for any item. For a jobbing shop type of business, however, and as Macnair was only too well aware of from his studies of marketing problems, it was justifiable to quote Henry Ford and say that ‘history was bunk’.

Macnair urged Donegan to cut his losses by abandoning tht. computer package at once, and accept the embarrassment of having to reinstate the manual stock control system. But this was too much for Donegan, who could not face the inevitable top-llevel queries if he were to re- order equipment of the same type as he had recently scrapped. So the computer system lingered on, stock control was totally inefficient and deliveries went from bad to worse. Although Macnair inserted some proper logic into the statistical part of the ‘package system’, this did little more than hold an already unsatisfactory position without getting back to the efficiency of the manual system. Macnair and Donegan barely stayed on speaking terms, and Donegan felt that, in some way, Macnair was to blame for the whole thing. Macnair, however, had not been idle. Seeing the false foundation of the setup, he determined to put the prediction business on a sounder basis. So he devised a market plan for giving Donegan some idea of the factory load and the mix of products within that load, for one, two and three years ahead.

Donegan, too, had not been idle, especially in his social life. Hiis athletic record and ability had got him established in the local Sports Club, and his personal charm had made him welcome in a circle of members whose interest in club affairs was based more on social activities than on facilities for sport. He was a good raconteur in the bar, and was gratified to find that he was very acceptable as a drinking companion to several men who were involved in engineering as entrepreneurs. One thing led to another, and, one day, Donegan found himself being invited to consider joining a small company, initially as Managing Director Designate, with the prospect of eventually becoming Chairman, to take the place of one of his bar cronies who was

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hoping to coast downwards toward retirement. He finally accepted the job, and, after a few

weeks alongside his entrepreneur friend, he was compelled to recognise the fact that the organisational side of business in which he was now engaged could not be dealt with by a broad smile and a heap of blarney. His new employers made products on a batch or mass-production basis, supplying markets which had quite violent fluctuations; the key to the whole thing was market planning and efficient and flexible stock policies. This time there was never any question of robbing Peter to pay Paul, or of smoothing over irate customers with booze and smooth talk. Customers wanted their goods when they wanted them. If their needs were not met, as promised, they simply went elsewhere. Neither threats nor cajolery with foremen, charge hands or anyone else had the slightest effect, except to arouse resentment. This was because, as Donegan began to realise, he was identified, if not quite correctly, as a person responsible for the production plans, so that it could only rebound to his discredit if he wanted to make piecemeal changes while the plan was still being worked through.

Donegan saw, only too clearly, that what he needed was some organisational help, starting with marketing and a market plan, plus some means for converting the market plan into an effective production plan. He kept thinking about Macnair, and wondered how his former

‘I‘m not sure what your charts are supposed to be showingme’, suidDOnegun

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colleague would have dealt with the problem. Having got this far, he decided that he had got to get hold of Macnair or someone like him, or he was sunk. At the same time, he could hardly ask his Board to accept that he had to have recourse to outside help in production, a field in which he was supposed to be an authority, so the whole thing would have to be handled with special care.

Inquiries revealed that Macnair, also, had been looking further afield than his immediate job. His brand of logic dictated that, if he developed a new technique, he had some professional obligation to make it known for the benefit of others dealing with like problems; he wrote articles for the technical press, lectured from time to time, and had organised a few seminars. The interest aroused by these activities convinced him that there was a bigger market for his services outside his present employment than within it, so he had negotiated a partnership in small management consultancy which now advertised itself as Clough & Macnair.

Donegan’s urgent problem was how to get Macnair’s help, and he examined intently some possible approaches. A club contact was not worth a thought, as Macnair was not club minded. Likewise, a direct approach would almost certainly lead to a direct rebuff. On the other hand, reasoned Donegan, Macnair had a partner, Clough, and it was discovered, by inquiry through club channels, that he was much more accessible, to the extent that Donegan was able to get him to accept a lunch invitation. Treating the occasion as a one-day consultation, with the appropriate fee, which he would have no problem in authorising, Donegan used all his persuasive powers to sell Clough the idea of Macnair tackling his urgent problem, without actually knowing the identity of his client.

Clough had been in management consult- ancy for some years, and his outlook was simple. If the client wanted his services and was prepared to pay the going rate, confidentiality at any level was not likely to be allowed to constitute a barrier to business. Donegan’s charm was wasted on him; he was already thinking out ways of getting round the difficulty of a clash between Donegan and Macnair. He quickly decided that the only effective method was for him to accept the assignment as a marketing problem, as he had already divined that Donegan could get authorisation for consultancy expenditure on

marketing, but not on production. His plan was to take the work to the point at which every piece of data had been collected, and the situation could be presented almost as a textbook problem, with the qualification that it was more elaborate than any textbook problem could ever be.

‘We can take this work on just as soon as you are ready to confide the assignment to us, Mr. Donegan’, he purred. ‘I can assure you that you will get the full benefit of Macnair’s expertise, but without his having any direct involvement with yourself or your company’.

‘How will you arrange that?’. ‘As far as your company is concerned every-

thing will be handled through myself. Our proposals, after I have done all the investiga- tions with you and your people, will be the result of the joint effort of Mr. Macnair and me’.

The management consultants, Clough and Macnair duly received an assignment from Donegan’s firm to explore the organisational side of marketing, with a view to minimising changes in production plans once set in motion. Clough made all the contacts, sifted the infor- mation, and, finally presented his partner with a problem, supported by a wealth of detail but without anything to identify the client concerned. He also hinted to Macnair that this could well be a prototype contract (which, fortunately, it probably could), which if dealt with particularly successfully, could greatly enhance the reputation of their business, and of Macnair’s personal reputation. Macnair fell for it, hook, line and sinker, and came up with a most elegant solution to the overall problem. It worked admirably when applied to Donegan’s situation, and he survived in his probationary post to become Chairman of his company. To this day, Macnair does not know that he did Donegan a tremendous service.

It does almost look as though a lot of blarney will make up for quite a lack of logic.

0 TEE: 1998 Len Williams is a retired mechanical and electrical engineer. H e graduated from the University of Liverpool in 1935. Four years’ work in electrical design was followed by marketing experience with Ferranti Ltd. and the Renold and Coventry Chain Company Ltd. In 1953, Mr. Williams set up the Market Research Unit of Ferranti’s Transformer Department, and in subsequent years, until his retirement in 1974, played an influential role in the development and application of industrial market research and operational research technologies within the UK. Mr. Williams has contributed extensively to the literature and is the author of ‘Industrial marketing management and controls’ and ‘Microcomputers and marketing decisions’. He is an IEE Fellow.

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