(Blogger’s note: You can read at Part 1 of this story here.)

About the same time, Bob Hodge, Con Met’s Spokane Plant Manager, was transferred to an aluminum foundry that Consolidated Freightways had recently purchased in Sydney, Ohio. Shortly thereafter I was asked to visit this plant to assess the production facility for improvement. In my opinion it was pretty well put together, which I reported. Thank goodness I was not asked to transfer there because I did not want to move.

In the spring of 1977, Bob Tenold, John’s oldest son who is my age, asked me to lunch and asked if I would be interested in coming to work for Spokane Steel Foundry and help manage the modernization program they were undertaking. Of course, I accepted.

A couple of weeks later Patti and I were invited to the 10-year anniversary of the Tenold’s owning the foundry—much to the surprise of the key staff who were there. After the celebratory toast, John announced my coming to work for them.

A lot of the work I did the first couple of years was to help purchase and install equipment that John and Bob had already decided on, but had not consulted with people on the plant floor about. It took me more than a year into my new job to realize that in addition to the job of improving the productivity of the foundry, I was hired to be “the bad guy” and butt heads with some of the more established employees at the foundry who were more of the opinion, “That’s the way we have always done things and it works, so why change?”

This made me somewhat unpopular with the core shop employees for a while, but fortunately they began to see that I was doing pretty good work and they reluctantly accepted what I was doing.

Once again my arrogance took control of my actions. Many of the things I planned, designed, and implemented I had no prior knowledge of. I just thought things would work—or I did rapid, and sometimes incomplete, research to see if my ideas had any merit. Fortunately I had many more successes then failures.

In 1979, John Tenold asked me if I would design an automatic handling system for the foundry’s 30 x 36 molding line, the heart of the business at that time. Of course I said yes, even though I wasn’t certain what that would entail. A large machinery sales company in southern California had proposed to manufacture a system for this line, but John felt it was too expensive and would require shutting most of the foundry down while it was being installed and tested.

After thinking for a few days, I came up with a concept that I felt would reduce the cost and risk for both the business and me. I proposed we start with only the simplest element of the system, install it over a weekend, and see if I knew what I was doing. Additionally I was convinced we would not need to purchase all new metal molding boxes that others proposed at a cost of over $100,000.

After I wrote my proposal with estimated costs, and a manufacturing and installation schedule that would spread the cost out over a period of 1 ½ years rather than all up front, and would not require any production down time, John bought into my proposal much to the dismay of the California firm and some foundry employees, who were convinced I would fail.

So I went to work designing all the details of the first machine at home on a contract separate from my salary. When the drawings were finished, I had a local machine shop construct it. When finished, the foundry maintenance department installed it. To everyone’s astonishment (maybe even mine) it worked the first time it was tried.

With that success I was given permission to design the next two machines, and when they worked, I went on to designing the rest of the system which was much more complicated.

Stay tuned for more of this story.

Ken Kaiyala
4-16-23