Factory And The Assembly

This Will Doubtless Only Make Sense To Old Fugeys* Like Me

Were you to read a title like that, and be of Conrad's vintage, then it would bring back the halcyon days of the Eighties, when dinosaurs roamed the airwaves and New Wave was getting rather old and long in the tooth.

     Here in Manchester we had 'Factory', the record label, and The Hacienda nightclub, which Conrad remembers as having peculiar graffiti-proof paint in the toilets.  Elsewhere, there was Vince Clarke, the keyboard player from Yazoo, and Fergal Sharkey, the vocalist from The Undertones, who combined to form The Assembly.  Art!

     Don't worry, we're not going to be carrying out a retrospective of long-vanished musical trends and bands, because, as you may have guessed, this Intro is not about Factory Records or The Assembly.  Rather, it's about a factory and an assembly line.  

     We first encounter the narrator, Old Design Engineer, hereafter ODE, in a large meeting convened to deal with a problem at the factory that had reduced productivity by 50%.  This was thanks to half the 'assembly units' which you or I would know as 'assembly lines' - Art!

     - running on old and obsolete software.  ODE doesn't mention the background to this but I bet I can guess what it was: if it ain't broke don't fix it especially if fixing it would cost money.  Thus the problem would escalate over time.

     Optimistic Manufacturing Director, hereafter OMD 

Art!

     held forth that to carry out a patch, test and functional confirmation would take between seven to ten days.
     ODE, fulfilling the professional role of a bluebottle in a tub of Fiery Jack Liniment, asks why they don't simply contract with the equipment suppliers who had supplied the modern half of the assembly units, and - buy new assembly units?  Art!

ODE in metaphorical form

     The Vice President, who was chairing the meeting, mocked ODE as not knowing what happened on the production line and to 'stay in your lane'.

     Joke's on the Vain Posturer, who cannot have been au fait with ODE's employment history, as they had spent 10 years in manufacturing engineering before switching to design.

     You can probably guess where this is going.  ODE reckoned the 'seven to ten days' calculation was, technically speaking, utter guff.  He reckoned, thanks to that decade of experience that Vapid Plonker knew naught of, that three weeks would be needed to get back to a baseline production figure, nowhere near maximum capacity.  Being a professionally qualified engineer, he then Covered His Bottom and activated Malicious Compliance by sending out an e-mail listing the minutes of the meeting, his expensive suggestion and his requirement to stay in his lane.  Art!

More Eighties synthpop

     After three weeks, the 'Patch, Test and Functional Confirmation' process had been a dismal failure.  Therefore, the factory's productivity had been stuck at 50% for another 10 days beyond what their target had been, meaning another 10 days loss of half their profits.  If we make a guesstimate that normal profits on 100% production would be $20,000 per day, then 10x $10,000 = $100,000 loss.

     Ooops.

     New assembly units were purchased.  The sorry tale did not end there, as the new units took 3 weeks to get up to 75% capacity, and then another 2 weeks to achieve 95% capacity.  So, in all, it took 8 weeks or 56 days to get back to near full capacity, making that original 'seven to ten' estimate look foolish in the extreme.

     Ooops.  Again.  Art!

     OMD was made the scapegoat and fired.  Vituperative Pseud found that he ended up with no annual bonus, because these are only given if departments make a profit, and his 'stay in your lane' bungling had cost his department  $450,000.

     We don't know the eventual career path of Venomous Prat, because ODE left the business a year later, which is a shame, as it's fun to see Killer Karma Krokodiles coming in to roost.  Art!

This is someone's worst nightmare

"The War Illustrated Edition 210 22nd July 1945"

Posting these illos is a bit of a gamble, given how variable the camera still can be, even when my hands aren't trembling.  Let's see what the next one is.  Art!

     Ah, another central pages montage.  Okay, so this illo I have zoomed in on is <checks notations> a retrospective from 1945, looking back a the D-Day beaches a year later.  This photo is of one of the British beaches they assaulted at, Arromanches, known on the day as 'Gold Beach'.  The beachfront properties are still in ruins and a landing craft is rusting apart on the shoreline.  Very poignant.  Art!

     There you go, Arromanches-les-bains as it is today.

"Ziam"

As you should already be aware, this is a Thai zombie film, set in a very dystopian future where that unhappy country has isolated itself from the rest of the world for a decade, suffering drought, near-famine and a jackbooted authoritarian dictatorship.  At least I assume the latter, the film doesn't last long enough to cover an election cycle.

     ANYWAY into that fervid mix, after 15 minutes in, add zombies.  Art!

     That's Singh, the brooding protagonist, who ends up trying to rescue his doctor lover, Rin, from the zombie-infested hospital she's a paediatrician at.  

     Fortunately for him, these zombies only spread the infection by biting; you can punch, kick and nut them all day long without risk, which is fortunate for Singh the Muy-Tai expert.

     Also, an interesting twist occurs when the hospital's sprinkler system goes off.

     No spoilers, just a caution to stick around as the credits roll.

     In case you were wondering, yes it's subtitled, and they thankfully also include translations for Thai language signage, which is utterly incomprehensible to this foreigner**.

In The Interests Of Accuracy And Fairness

Allow me to put up an illo of the stock value of Tesla, which has been sitting in my stock of potential items for a week or so.  Art!

     I like to use the '6 month' graphic as it shows a decent timespan, because daily and even weekly can show wild fluctuations.

     Now, as I put in the title, we here at BOOJUM! strive to be scrupulously honest <that's a big fat lie - the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand> so here's the updated 6 month graphic from today.  Art!

     So, the value, thanks to Elong Tusk and his political dream, has fallen by over $100 since February.  What a magisterial business tycoon!  He might even manage to become bankrupt one day, in emulation of his bestie The Orange Land Whale!  

     O noes, sorry, they fell out, didn't they?  Something about The Beatles manager and bootleg tapes he had hidden away, the Epstein Tapes or similar.

Hot From The Kazakhstan Border

Ruffia tries to move it's logistics via railways, which is not going so well, as 'Prune60' over on Bluesky will tell you.  The other option is to send stuff by road, which is a whole lot less efficient, but needs must.  Art!

     This is the Russo-Kazakh*** border, and those trucks have been queueing for, not an hour as previously, but 10 days.  This is not merely the Kazakhs being bloody-minded: the Ruffians are moving from a paper to a digital passport system, and their unfortunate truck drivers are experiencing the collateral fallout.  O dearie me.  How sad.  One fervently hopes, with fingers crossed, that those cargoes aren't perishable.  How one hopes!

Finally -

You will be fascinated to know that I got some glycerine and liquid glucose on the weekly shop last night, for future experiments with ice cream.  The last time I tried either of these was probably a decade ago, and wasn't particularly effective, though you can count on me keeping you informed this time around.

Pip pip!

*  Like a fogey except more so

** Dan, my trainer at Serco, said his dad had retired there and learned the language.  Over a period of 20 years.

*** 'Qazaq' in Kazakh.