In the late 1970s, Spokane Steel Foundry purchased an IBM 3000 computer system to tabulate the accounting and other financial details of the company. It replaced the manual recording and summarizing of the information, and could do it in a fraction of the time. It consisted of a large card-reading machine, a punchcard-producing station requiring a person to prepare the cards, and a bank of tape machines to record the information read off the cards. This equipment occupied a large enclosed office.

While I was busy working on foundry process improvements, I had to show reasonable financial rates of return for the projects I proposed in order to get funding. This required I know the costs of what the shop was doing. I had been spending a lot of time on the foundry floor observing what was happening and estimating or even measuring the amount of labor different processes required, as well as materials and other costs incurred.

One day I realized most of the information I needed was buried in all those cards fed into the IBM computer, so I went to see the computer manager. He was one of those “It can’t be done” persons so I quickly realized I had to use a little tact. When I needed something, I would walk into his office and simply ask if he thought he could figure out how to sort the cards to give me what I needed. Of course, he would say he was too busy or he didn’t think it was possible so I would thank him and not bother him again. Then magically, a day or two later, he would let me know he thought he had what I had asked for.

I guess even though he wouldn’t admit it I think he liked the challenged.

Ken Kaiyala
9-2-2024