[time-nuts] HP Stories: Cesium Standards on Subs and Sperry
djl
djl at montana.com
Sun Feb 24 20:37:25 UTC 2019
Love milspec stories! Always reminds me of some of my favorite quotes:
“Mechanical rules are never a substitute for clarity of thought.” --
Brian Kernighan
". . . rules are a substitute for thought . . ." -- Robert Gunning
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . ." -- R.W.
Emerson
Don
On 2019-02-24 06:37, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) wrote:
> While HP wasn't a direct defense contractor, we did sell a lot of test
> equipment to defense contractors. The big American submarines had a
> Cesium Standard or two as part of their instrumentation systems. I
> know little about the application, but heard it was part of the
> communication and/or navigation systems. Maybe some of you have
> experience with this, and can add to the story.
>
> None the less, Sperry corporation was a sub-contractor into the
> greater DOD eco-system, and integrated the 5061A into some larger
> system they sold to the submarine builders. Sperry was a "real"
> defense contractor, and had to live by all the DOD rules. There
> were a number of defense contractors in Silicon Valley, with Lockheed
> Missiles and Space Company being perhaps the largest employer in the
> area. Both my father, and my wife's father were engineers at LSMC
> for their careers. We used to joke at my High School that
> "everyone's dad worked for Lockheed." Thus, DOD companies were not
> a foreign concept to me. But they way the DOD procurement process
> worked was very unlike how HP worked and interfaced with our
> commercial customers.
>
> Sperry wanted to turn HP into defense supplier when they purchased
> 5061A's from us. First, they had their special "Sperry Blue" paint
> job. Our sheet metal and paint shops had to custom build the
> cosmetic parts for Sperry in a lovely baby blue color. Next, they
> wanted to make sure what was purchased was exactly what was specified.
> EXACTLY. The technique to enforce this was to document and inspect
> everything. A special Sperry material list was created, with every
> resistor, screw and wire listed. HP part numbers, approved
> suppliers, and supplier part numbers, for everything. It turns out
> there are a lot of components in a 5061A. Sperry would then insist
> that HP segregate all the components that were going into their sacred
> 5061As, and have our incoming quality department inspect every single
> tiny part, to ensure it was the correct component, coming from proper
> suppliers. The attention to detail was both impressive and
> maddening. This was way outside our normal
> manufacturing processes, and a huge hassle.
>
> The representatives from Sperry were from a different planet than HP
> people. This part of Sperry had it's headquarters in the NYC area,
> and the lead representative was like a movie character from a God
> Father movie. Short, plump, arrogant, Italian, in charge. He was
> THE MAN, and expected to be treated as such. He was cordial on the
> surface, but was unmovable when trying to negotiate what we though
> would be a sensible compromise of some kind. To him, change, any
> change, was bad. Because if anything ever happened, for the rest of
> human history, that could be traced back to a change he allowed, he
> would be held accountable. He wanted to be held accountable for
> buying 8 Cesium Standards, not for adding risk to that purchase.
> He had a young assistant to grind through all the details. This guy
> was about 30, and knew his role in the game. There were procurement
> rules his company must follow, and his job was to make sure every
> detail got done. EVERY DETAIL. He br
> ought exactly zero judgment or critical thinking to the process.
>
> Mr. Mafia man told a story about why not changing things was so
> important. As I recall, Sperry made some kind of targeting system for
> artillery, probably dating back to WWII, and a vendor had upgraded the
> insulation on some wiring from a fabric weave to more modern extruded
> plastic insulation. For some reason this led to a failure. (Likely
> heat related). This was used as indisputable proof that even the
> most innocent looking changes can cause a problem, problems are the
> enemy, and change was it's root cause.
>
> And then HP invented the 5061B, and changed a bunch of stuff from the
> 5061A. Sperry had a contract that required another batch of HP
> Cesium Standards, and wanted nothing to do with the 5061B. They had
> made several previous purchases of 5061As, and their overall system
> had not changed, and they didn't want the Cesium Standard to Change
> either. Since I was the 5061B guy, and young and expendable and
> ignorant (never had worked with Sperry before), I was assigned the
> task of getting Sperry happy with the 5061B. I remember Jeanie
> Young, an energetic women from our marketing department being the lead
> contact with Sperry on business stuff (fuss with contracts, and be
> responsible for the wine-and-dine aspects), as I did the
> "engineering".
>
> I think our basic position is that not only we don't make the 5061A
> any more, we COULD NOT make a 5061A. Either take the 5061B, or
> nothing. While the 5061B wasn't exactly the 5061A, nothing else
> available in the world was even close. They were stuck with us and
> the hated 5061B and all its changes. One of the even more annoying
> aspects of the 5061B is that we had gone thorough many of the systems,
> and upgraded older "Code 3 and 4" parts to "Code 1 and 2" parts.
> (Recall the past story about HP preferred part process.) So there
> were dozens of places where there were part number changes. It was
> like the 5061B had small pox in full bloom. I have faint memories
> of Sperry trying to turn the 5061B back into a 5061A, one reverted
> changed resistor at a time. But it could not have been that bad,
> because we only had to deal with them for a month or so.
>
> Sperry had no choice but to reset to the 5061B, and suck up the risk.
> They were not happy about this. Their solution was to document the
> snot out of the 5061B, and make extra sure that the abomination we
> were selling them in place of perfect 5061A was made exactly to spec.
> Mr. Detail Man had point on this, and nothing escaped his attention.
> For us free-wheeling HP guys, this was torture. I remember working
> with Bob Ponzini, an experienced quality manager who had gotten sucked
> into the Sperry experience. He was about 20 years my senior and a
> really great guy. We were grinding through some inane detail that
> Sperry had insisted on, and collapsed into hysterical giggle fit.
> We had been overwhelmed by the culture shock of working with Sperry.
>
> But looking back, it wasn't that bad. Just shut up, work through the
> details, and get it done. We used to complain that HP never made
> any money on these contracts, because of all the overhead Sperry
> consumed. Now possessing a better understanding of fixed vs.
> variable costs in real businesses, the Sperry contracts were good
> money. Yeah, they were a hassle, but they were also incremental
> revenue, which HPs Santa Clara Division desperately needed. As for
> the overhead, well, we didn't hire any more people, or pay anyone any
> overtime. We just absorbed it. So whatever extra we charged
> Sperry was in reality pure profit, because frankly, we didn't have
> anything else to do. We had managed to sell Sperry some of our fixed
> cost overhead, of which we had an abundant supply.
>
> And while HP Santa Clara had its issues, I also realized that I had an
> awesome job compared to what Mr. Detail had to do every day.
> Sometimes you just need a fresh perspective to appreciate what you
> have.
>
> Have a nice weekend,
>
> Hugh Rice
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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--
Dr. Don Latham AJ7LL
PO Box 404, Frenchtown, MT, 59834
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