The Case of the Missing Time
| | At approximately 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 23, 1959, Chet Craig, manager of the Norris |
Company's Central Plant, swung his car out of the driveway of his suburban home and headed toward the plant located some six miles away, just inside the Midvale city limits. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining brightly and a cool, fresh breeze was blowing. The trip to the plant took about 20 minutes and sometimes gave Chet an opportunity to think about plant problems without interruption.
| | The Norris Company owned and operated three printing plants. Norris enjoyed a nationwide |
commercial business, specializing in quality color work. It was a closely held company with some 350 employees, nearly half of whom were employed at the Central Plant, the largest of the three Norris production operations. The company's main offices were also located in the Central Plant building.
| | Chet had started with the Norris Company as an expediter in its Eastern Plant in 1948, just after |
he graduated from Ohio State. After three years Chet was promoted to production supervisor, and two years later he was made assistant to the manager of the Eastern Plant. Early in 1957, he was transferred to the Central Plant as assistant to the plant manager and one month later was promoted to plant manager when the former manager retired (see Figure 7).
Chet was in fine spirits as he relaxed behind the wheel. As his car picked up speed, the hum of the tires on the newly paved highway faded into the background. Various thoughts occurred to him, and he said to himself, "This is going to be the day to really get things done."
| | He began to run through the day's work, first one project, then another, trying to establish |
priorities. After a few minutes, he decided that the open-end unit scheduling was probably the most important, certainly the most urgent. He frowned for a moment as he recalled that on Friday the vice president and general manager had casually asked him if he had given the project any further thought. Chet realized that he had not been giving it much thought lately. He had been meaning to get to work on this idea for over three months, but something else always seemed to crop up. "I haven't had much time to sit down and really work it out," he said to himself. "I'd better get going and hit this one today for sure." With that, he began to break down the objectives, procedures, and installation steps of the project. He grinned as he reviewed the principles involved and calculated roughly the anticipated savings. "It's about time," he told himself. "This idea should have been followed up long ago." Chet remembered that he had first conceived of the open-end unit scheduling idea nearly a year and a half ago, just prior to his leaving Norris's Eastern Plant. He had spoken to his boss, Jim Quince, manager of the Eastern Plant, about it then, and both agreed that it was worth looking into. The idea was temporarily shelved when he was transferred to the Central Plant a month later.
A blast from a passing horn
| startled him, but his thoughts quickly returned to other plant projects he was determined |
to get underway. He started to think through a procedure for simpler transport of dies to and from the Eastern Plant. Visualizing the notes on his desk, he thought about the inventory analysis he needed to identify and eliminate some of the slow-moving stock items, the packing controls that needed revision, and the need to design a new special-order form. He also decided that this was the day to
| settle on a job printer to do the simple outside printing of office forms. There were a few |
other projects he couldn't recall offhand, but he could tend to them after lunch, if not before. "Yes, sir," he said to himself, "this is the day to really get rolling."
Chet's thoughts were interrupted as he pulled into the company parking lot. When he entered the plant Chet knew something was
| wrong as he met Al Noren, the stockroom foreman, who appeared troubled. "A great morning, Al," Chet |
greeted him cheerfully.
"Not so good, Chet; my new man isn't in this morning," Noren growled.
"Have you heard from him?" asked Chet.
"No, I haven't," replied Al.
Chet frowned as he commented, "These stock handlers assume you take it for granted that if they're not here, they're not here, and they don't have to call in and verify it. Better ask Personnel to call him."
Al hesitated for a moment before replying, "Okay, Chet, but can you find me a man? I have two cars to unload today."
As Chet turned to leave, he said, "I'll call you in half an hour, Al, and let you know."
Making a mental note of the situation, Chet
| headed for his office. He greeted the group of workers huddled around Marilyn, the office manag |
er, who was discussing the day's work schedule with them. As the meeting broke up, Marilyn picked up a few samples from the clasper, showed them to Chet, and asked if they should be shipped that way or if it would be necessary to inspect them. Before he could answer, Marilyn went on to ask if he could suggest another clerical operator for the sealing machine to replace the regular operator, who was home ill. She also told him that Gene, the industrial engineer, had called and was waiting to hear from Chet.
After telling Marilyn to go ahead and ship the samples, he made a note of the need for a sealer operator for the office and then called Gene. He agreed to stop by Gene's office before lunch and started on his routine morning tour of the plant. He asked each foreman the types and volumes of orders they were running, the number of people present, how the schedules were coming along, and the orders to be run next; helped the folding-room foreman find temporary storage space for consolidating a carload shipment; discussed quality control with a pressman who had been running poor work; arranged to transfer four people temporarily to different departments, including two for Al in the stockroom; and talked to the shipping foreman about pickups and special orders to be delivered
| that day. As he continued through the plant, he saw to it that reserve stock was moved out o |
f the forward stock area, talked to another pressman about his requested change of vacation schedule, had a "heart-to-heart" talk with a press helper who seemed to need frequent reassurance, and approved two type and one color-order okays for different pressmen.
Returning to his office, Ch
| et reviewed the production reports on the larger orders against his initial productions an |
d found that the plant was running behind schedule. He called in the folding-room foreman and together they went over the lineup of machines and made several necessary changes.
During this discussion, the composing-room foreman stopped in to cover several type changes, and the routing foreman telephoned for approval of a revised printing schedule. The stockroom foreman called twice, first to inf
| orm him that two standard, fast-moving stock items were dangerously low, later to advise hi |
m that the paper stock for the urgent Dillion job had finally arrived. Chet made the necessary subsequent calls to inform those concerned.
He then began to put delivery dates on important and difficult inquiries received from customers and salesmen. (The routine inquiries were handled by Marilyn.
| ) While he was doing this he was interrupted twice, once by a sales correspondent calling from the W |
est Coast to ask for a better delivery date than originally scheduled, once by the personnel vice president asking him to set a time when he could hold an initial training and induction interview with a new employee.
After dating the customer and salesmen inquiries, Chet headed for his morning conference in the executive offices. At this meeting, he answered the sales vice president's questions in connection with "hot" orders, complaints, and the status of large-volume orders and potential new orders. He then met with the general manager to discuss a few ticklish policy matters and to answer "the old man's" questions on seve
| ral specific production and personnel problems. Before leaving the executive offices, he stoppe |
d at the office of the secretary-treasurer to inquire about delivery of cartons, paper, and boxes and to place a new order for paper.
On the way back to his own office, Chet conferred with Gene about two current engineering projects concerning which he had called earlier. When he reached his desk, he looked at his watch. It was 10 minutes before lunch, just time enough to make a few notes of the details he needed to check in order to answer the knotty questions raised by the sales manager that morning.
After lunch, Chet started again. He began by checking the previous day's production reports, did some rescheduling to get out urgent orders, placed appropriate delivery dates on new orders and inquiries received that morning, and consulted with a foreman on a personal problem. He spent some 20 minutes at the TWX going over mutual problems with the Eastern Plant.
By midafternoon, Chet had m
| ade another tour of the plant, after which he met with the personnel director to review wi |
th him a touchy personal problem raised by one of the clerical employees, the vacation schedules submitted by his foremen, and the pending job-evaluation program. Following this conference, Chet hurried back to his office to complete the special statistical report for Universal Waxing Corporation, one of Norris's best customers. As he finished the report, he discovered that it was 10 minutes after
| six and he was the only one left in the office. Chet was tired. He put on his coat and hea |
ded through the plant toward the parking lot; on the way, he was stopped by both the night supervisor and night layout foremen for approval of type and layout changes.
With both eyes on the traffic, Chet reviewed the day he had just completed. "Busy?" he asked himself. "Too much so—but did I acco
| mplish anything?" His mind raced over the day's activities. "Yes and no" seemed to be the answer. "T |
here was the usual routine, the same as any other day. The plant kept going and I think it must have been a good production day. Any creative or special-project work done?" Chet grimaced as he reluctantly answered, "No."
With a feeling of guilt, he probed further. "Am I an executive? I'm paid like one, respected like one, and have a responsible assignment with the necessary authority to carry it out. Yet one of the greatest values a company derives from an executive is his creative thinking and accomplishments. What have I done about it? An executive needs some time for thinking. Today was a typical day, just like most other
| days, and I did little, if any, creative work. The projects that I so enthusiastically planned |
to work on this morning are exactly as they were yesterday. What's more, I have no guarantee that tomorrow night or the next night will bring me any closer to their completion. This is the real problem and there must be an answer."
Chet continued, "Night work? Yes, occasionally. This is understood. But I've been doing too much of this lately. I owe my wife and family some of my time. When you come down to it, they are the people for whom I'm really working. If I am forced to spend much more time away from them, I'm not meeting my own personal objectives. What about church work? Should I eliminate that? I spend a lot of time on this, but I feel I owe God some time, too. Besides, I believe I'm making a worthwhile contribution in this work. Perhaps I can squeeze a little time from my fraternal activities. But where does recreation fit in?"
Chet groped for the solution. "Maybe I'm just rationalizing because I schedule my own work poorly. But I don't think so. I've studied my work habits carefully and I think I plan intelligently and delegate authority. Do I need an assistant? Possibly, but that's a long-term project and I don't believe I could justify the additional overhead expenditure. Anyway, I doubt whether it would solve the problem."
By this time, Chet had turned of
| f the highway onto the side street leading to his home—the problem still uppermost in his mi |
nd. "I guess I really don't know the answer," he told himself as he pulled into his driveway. "This morning everything seemed so simple, but now ..." His thoughts were interrupted as he saw his son running toward the car calling out, "Mommy, Daddy's home."
Source: McNichols, T. J. (1973). The case of the missing time. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Kellogg School of Business.
If you were hired as a consultant to Chet, what would you advise him?
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