From: Tom Lane
Columbus
At times, I do hope we don’t lose some of the local history with Columbus and Cummins, whose destinies are so intertwined.
If Cummins had gone the way of Arvin, what would our town be?
Here is a little-known story of a moment that shifted that.
It was around 1985 or so, and the market was good for Cummins, and the pressure from the new Japanese manufacturing processes was growing. We had an opportunity while Cummins was in good financial shape to start a new approach to making engines.
I had been given the role of helping Cummins change from Jim Henderson, the COO at the time. I called a meeting of all the Cummins plant managers to discuss where we needed to go.
We met in the middle of the "main plant." There were about 12-15 worldwide plant managers in attendance. I knew almost all them at a personal level, like having beers at the CB!
We were there to talk about how Cummins can implement JIT (Just-in-time manufacturing). It was a complex and dramatic change in the way we did things. It was in the popular press at the time, but few really understood how drastic a change it would be.
We had a young engineer, Tom Bonnell, who really grasped the intricacies of this. We had talked and I convinced him to give a talk at this meeting of plant managers. He was a bit reluctant, since he was young and did not know the plant managers. I assured him I had his back.
At the meeting, he began presenting what it would take to become a world-class manufacturer. He was accurate, but at the time the company was making a lot of money because the economy was good and demand was high. And at the time, making money meant you were good are what you do.
As Tom presented, the plant managers started to give him a lot of grief about understanding how things work in the traditional way. He looked over at me with a “please help” look. I took over the meeting and challenged the push back by all the plant managers. I challenged them with how we were not very good, and that was met with silence. I stood there for a couple minutes before I was saved by one of the best plant managers.
John Yoder, the Seymour plant manager, broke the silence and said, “Hey, Tom is right, we are not very good at making things, but you know, EVEN A BLIND PIG GETS AN ACORN NOW AND THEN."
That comment changed everything. He was very respected and the facade of Cummins being good at making things was dropped.
We had a long way to go. It broke the ice for a new conversation and things were never the same after that.
Few know this story how John stood up to help save Cummins.
