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The New Year meant a movement away from the factory floor
and into the production offices. The age of the computer had
arrived and Mettoy was one of the first companies in the area to
splash out on a mainframe. It cost a lot of money I seem to
think £500,000. It was fitted into a large air-conditioned room.
probably about 60 sqft, that was cleaned from floor to ceiling
every 24 hours. Apparently it had enough computing power to run
the whole of Swansea. The production control facilities depended
on this monstrosity and I soon learnt that many people hid
behind it. If something went wrong then it was the computers
fault. Most people were scared of it as they simply didn’t
understand what it did. The Production Control office was made
up of two Range Controllers, one that ran Corgi (big
Cars/vehicles) and one that ran Corgi Juniors (Small Vehicles).
It was their job to ensure that the sales programme was met. The
marketing people would decide on the product range and the type
of packaging, the Range Controllers would then interpret the
programme looking at the warehouse stocks and programme the
factory
accordingly. Of course the computer knew the stocks of
everything. The only thing is nobody really trusted the numbers,
so several people (Unit Controllers) would check the stocks of
each component every morning just to be on the safe side. After
a few days of following the Unit Controllers around I was given
a selection of models to control. I won’t forget them ever, the
first was the Concorde, the second a GMC van, and the third the Starsky and Hutch Ford Torino. Three items didn’t seem so bad,
but of course life was not that simple and when you analysed
each you found that there were so many variants that you were
actually controlling many product lines. The GMC van was painted
twelve colours and ended up as a Spiderman Van, Marvel Comic
Van, Charlies Angel Van, a Radio One Van etc etc. The Concordes
went into about five gift sets; the Starsky and Hutch car was a
lot easier except for the fact the volumes were enormous. All
seemed to go well for the first few days. I had stocks of all
the components and the lines kept on churning out the products.
In these days nothing was produced under 250,000 pieces, however
the ‘honeymoon’ period was over. The first rule of manufacturing
‘he who shouts loudest gets the parts’. I didn’t stand a chance,
it was every man for himself I couldn’t get the body castings
out of the foundry and virtually nothing off the paint machine.
The second rule of manufacturing ‘agree a balanced production
programme with your fellow Unit Controllers and then when they
are not looking - alter it’
