Cape was always productive, even though the Waco Center kicked their butts later on.
In hindsight, production was a word that should not have existed when Cape first started. The reason I make that statement is, “Capes production was based on Fort Wayne union workers, so called production”.
I do not remember all the standards for production back in the day, but I remember one standard and that is the bin section, as it was one of my departments. Production was measured as, “Lines per hour”. Simply put, a filler has an order, and each line on the order counted toward that employee’s production. The bin section order fillers had to fill 60 lines per hour to meet production. (As I understand it, all centers have a bin section production of at least double that now.)
The improved production I want to discuss has nothing to do with the bin section. I want to talk about heavy bulk production. The Cape Warehouse’s first expansion had been completed and heavy bulk was moved into the new building along with another department.
Heavy bulk was located in the back of the new addition, while shipping was located in the front of the original building. The problem this caused was, the shipping carts loaded with merchandise (aka Ralph carts) had to be pulled to shipping by hand, and the empty carts had to be pulled back to the Bulk area by hand. Cape had no tugger, heck, we didn’t know what a tugger was!
After a visit from someone out of the home office it was decided to send us a tugger. It was an old tugger, but it still worked. We decided to use it to pull full carts to shipping and empty carts back to the bulk area. This was a time saver and less strain on the person who had been pulling the carts by hand.
We had the tugger a couple weeks when one of the bulk order fillers, began to use it not only to pull carts to and from shipping, he also used it while filling orders. His production doubled! I asked him to see how much he could improve production using the tugger and we would provide the info to Fort Wayne.
Well, needless to say, the operator on the tugger was doubling the filling rate of those on foot. The Cape center soon received several more tuggers and that began a production revolution not only at Cape but also at other centers.
An old piece of equipment designated for one job, applied to another job, soon led to improved production in several centers, and it made the day’s work easier on the employees.
Don Ford
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