Archive through March 16, 2012

[brhodes]

Chris,
I just got out of work. and was planning on lurking but my wife seen your daughters pink Cub now I'm told I may have to look for one for our granddaughter.

Not sure if that is a sin or not, but "It's Cute!"

Ok the good thing is she just told me I can get another Cub.

Please keep my wife Kim updated with pics

Thank you.

 

[dfrisk]

LUTHER - How far IH planned ahead depended on what they were planning on doing. If they were planning anticipated production of a NEW item, the Marketing Dept would come up with some numbers via a SWAG. Sometimes the plan was WAY too low, sometimes way too high. For some reason the Marketing people always seemed to mis-read the market, reacted badly or too late to conditions. IH was heavily driven by their marketing people and I could make a REALLY strong argument that they were the cause of IH's downfall, not the union or poor upper management.

For production of existing product with a decent history they would plan out the current month plus twelve more, total of 13 months. In most cases depending on the item the current month plus 2-3 coming months would be firm, no changes allowed. Long lead-time items like engines, major machined castings, etc would be in this group. On small items, hardware, small simple steel stampings, decals, lights, etc the firm schedule would only be current month plus the first month.

I'm not exactly sure when the 44A & 50A decks were released, sometime late in the 1X8/1X9 production, 1972, maybe 1973, I'm pretty sure they didn't build decks 4-5 yrs before starting to ship them. I'd actually be surprised if they started making parts for them to replace the old 42" & 48" decks even 4-5 MONTHS before the demand required. They would have made a pilot run of parts and assembled them to test the tooling, but the final Eng Change releasing them for sale wouldn't have been done to put them in production until they got engineering & marketing approval for the design until the decks were done being field tested.

As complex as IH's manufacturing system was, they actually had a VERY well managed manufacturing control system, new parts, engineering changes, etc all very well documented & planned.

 

[elincoln]

Harry: I have 6 various colored garden tractors with starter/generators, I'm missing a starter for a red/tan with a 10hp kohler.

 

[pbell]

To support what Denny said about the Marketing Dept.,the Subject of the IH Farm Equipment Division, Tractor Committee Report NO. 31, dated February 4, 1960, was "Development program for the Addition of a Garden Tractor to our line". Within that report under the heading POTENTIAL MARKET: It states that quote: "The industrial sales group estimate that the demand for the proposed unit will amount to between 5,000 and 10,000 units per year" end quote. This was based on Wheelhorse (Wheelhorse, Bolens, and Simplicity would be the main competitive models)having an estimated production and sales of 10,000 units in 1958.

In this case, the sales people were a little off. Production of the Cub Cadet began in January 1960, with S/N 590. In late March of 1960, production exceded 5,000 units, and by the end of May 1960, over 10,000 units had been produced. By the end of December 1960, production was over 23,000 units. The Sales and Marketing people were not always correct,even though they had a LARGE part in what IH did or did not do, and like Denny, I too think they were part of the "downfall" of IH

 

[hydroharry]

Edward "Hot Rod" Lincoln (sorry I left that ID off my last post) - you're probably aware but some of the S/G's rotate CW and some CCW. I can never remember which way it is for our units but I think it's CCW.

Paul B - aren't your production dates off by 1 year? I think you're talking about production in 1961.

Dennis F - been some time since I saw reference to a SWAG. I never worked for IH but had some connections to Sales and Marketing in a different industry. Every year Sales and Marketing would put together a plan for the next year amd inform the factories so they could plan production, and every year we had production delays, sometimes pushing deliveries out to nearly a year. We finally figured out what was happening. The Sales and Marketing plans got put in a file, and the factories used the plans from the Orders dept (which was really their own people), and then we found out the Orders dept just used the previous years production figures and increased/decreased the numbers depending on what had happened over the previous few years. That's when we finally figured out why it was so hard to get stuff, and why there was inventory of some old stuff. All in all you have to point the finger at management for letting things operate this way. All were good organizations but they didn't have someone bringing them all together, which they now do. I just wanted to point this out since you hear that it was the union, or factory, or marketing, or sales orgs that brought that company down. I always believe in the end that management runs the company and management makes the decisions on how it operates and is organized, and management makes or breaks the company. I certainly wish IH was still around. It made some wonderful equipment especially our little tractors. I think IH serves as a lesson to many others about what can happen to one of the biggest and best, and we all know history does repeat itself.

Hydro Harry
Old Cubs Never Die (the best never rest)

 

[jchamberlin]

All --For the edification of those following the conversation between Dennis, Paul, and Harry regarding the IH Marketing Dept, S.W.A.G is an acronym for Scientific Wild A$$ Guess; not the more current Stuff We All Get (which somehow brings up the spectre of venereal disease for me??).

Being in Sales myself, I can testify that SWAGging a number is something frequently done; sales is not "scientific" in any sense of the word in which I know it; it is an "art" according to many who practice it.

 

[pbell]

Harry,
DUH! My bad, you are correct. The report was dated 1960, but the production figures should read Jan 1961, Mar 1961, May 1961 and Dec 1961. I'll blame it on having the wrong glasses on and couldn't see what I was typing. <font size="-2">That's my story and I'm sticking to it.....</font>

Jeremiah,
The military just call's it a WAG, nothing scientific about it.

 

[cjrolke]

well guys i got some assembly done on the pink 72

it will be getting new tri-ribs on the front and ags on the back and i have some more painting to do

 

[dfrisk]

HARRY - My first responce was over the size limit for posting.

Any place I've ever worked since IHC we've NEVER built to a forcast, Only firm customer order. Actually IH did too. I'm sure somebody @ FARMALL was responsible for keeping track of how accurate the forcast was. I know I always got grief from BF. Goodrich who was sole supplier of the 4-5 sizes of radial rear tractor tires I used, and they always complained how poor the forcast was, some months they'd ship me over 150% of my forcast.

Most companies have implemented some form of KAN-BAN or pull production system for inventory for assembly. Last company I worked at I had the highest inventory turns of the five people in Purchasing, between 17-1/2 and 18 turns over-all. At FARMALL I had several part numbers I turned between 300 and 350 times a year, that's less than 1/2 day's supply in plant at ANY time. Granted I passed the same pair of 30.5X32 tires & rims on to my successor that I inherited from my predesessor, but the tires/rims were only worth $3000. I was turning about $10 Million a month of inventory DAILY.

To anybody who hasn't read it, the book, "A Corporate Tragedy" by Barbara Marsh is a great book about the decline of IH. An old friend, co-worker,Mentor who's wife got her MBA had a class where that book WAS the text book, the "What NOT to do textbook". It's getting hard to find but I bet you could get it at a public library, plus I think Binder Books carries it.

 

[pfunk]

Dennis, Amazon has the book for 75 plus dollars used and you don't want to know what they want for a new copy.