Quick Career Story

[Achilles]

When I joined the company in 1997 we bought woofers, tweeters, and crossovers from China, but all the plastics, wood, packaging/manuals/labels/hardware, and final assembly and testing of full systems happened at our mfg. plant in Tijuana, just across the border from our office in San Diego.

In 2000 Mexico swore in a new president and he immediately changed a lot of import/export duty fees that made building our products there no longer cost effective. Decision was made to move EVERYTHING over to China and shut Mexico down.

I got the task of heading up the project. We were doing a lot of stuff for a lot of companies at the time but the big 4 was JBL Pro, Harman Consumer, Klipsch, and Radio Shack. We were doing complete in-ceiling and in-wall line-ups for them.

The challenge was to continue business as usual - we were moving tons of product monthly for each of them - without any shipment delays, all while completely re-qualifying about 40-50 different products, many needing complete re-certification from UL and CSA.

FUCK ME!!!!!

Anyway, we were having problems with the Harman Engineering group being a bit to anal about approving the new finished MIC assemblies and finally the shit hit the fan cause orders were gonna get delayed and Harman was going to start losing sales to the competition.

Me and our company CEO had to fly to New York to meet with the Harman big wigs, including the head engineer who was making my life utterly miserable.

Even though the blame for delays could be equally doled out between the customer's engineers and some of our factories dropping little balls, I had to sit at a large conference table in a suit and tie and get brow beat for a couple of hours by the very guy who I would have liked to have punched in the mouth, while he showed off for the other Harman folks sitting at the table (as well as cover his own ass by blaming everything on me/my company).

Point being I shut up and took it, then very calmly explained how little things like the number of threads per inch of thread forming screws should not be treated as stop production types of issues (that was a real! Mexico screws were 18 TPI while the new China ones were 16)

Harman agreed with all of our proposals and the meeting ended on a really positive note and all major production delays were avoided.

Funny, as the dude was leaving the room, and while I was still sitting and gathering my stuff, he walked over to thank me and he put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze with a little nod of the head - almost as if to say THANKS for playing your part and taking all my crap and allowing me to come out the good guy. Think he knew I could have easily put him on the spot in front of his bosses for not having better control over the project from his end.

That's the way you do it.

Story over.

 

[Achilles]

Mid 90s a/d/s/ was sold outright to a new group who wanted to kick-start things in a big way.

Engineering got to work on re-inventing the wheel which mainly focused on long standing sore spots that the original owner had been too stubborn to address.

My challenge was to improve on the mounting method for our biggest selling architectural in-wall speakers. These sold predominately to
custom install firms who would bid entire homes/auditoriums/airports/whatever and then had their own crews to do all the work.

The original mounting worked absolutely fine but required too much time and effort. It was actually pretty easy to make better.

1. Replace the machine screw threaded inserts with nylon ones that could use drywall screws. 1/3rd less turns needed to cinch it.
2. Old bracket had a left and right side that not only required orientation but also kinda flopped around when you put it in the wall,
so we made the new version one piece.
3. The brackets came packed separate as did the screws. We simply changed it to pre-assembled and ready to go out of the box.

The acoustic guys came up with some new driver tech that was a lot of black magic BS, but was exactly the kind of thing a dealer could make
a sale with - "These new models have those amazing M-T-M Arrays in them!" We also came up with an entirely new industrial design look
for everything.

New president was impressed enough with everything he decides to go all in and foots the bill to fly in all of our major US reps for a big
presentation and all the other crap that goes with it - even a freaking 'cocktail party'.

Now the scary part. We choose a nice hotel near the airport to put everyone up in and they have one of those plush conference halls
that doubles for weddings, seminars, shows, etc.
Not only do I have to get up in front of everyone alone and explain the new installation changes we made, but we built up a small section
of wall so I could demo the whole thing in real time.
Under a spotlight and with a clip on microphone so the entire room of about 200 could hear.

Day came and it's my turn. I do my entire spiel including the install and it goes off without a hitch. As with all of the previous demos
the crowd politely claps and as it dies down one of the few woman in the room, a very well known dealer in our industry, blurted out,
"You don't know how good that just was." - obviously thinking about the $$ she was going to be saving now.

Without missing a beat, and I have no clue why, I replied, "Thank you. Would you like a cigarette?"

Room EXPLODES with laughs that go on for a long time. Then one of our sales guys in the back of the room loudly says, "First time I've seen
a guy complimented for a quick screw." Place explodes again.

From that point on the whole thing got a lot more fun and the party later (all paid for) was EPIC. I apologized to the woman
at dinner in case I'd offended her but she just brushed it off with a loud laugh.

 

[norminal]

Then one of our sales guys in the back of the room says, "First time I've seen
a guy complimented for a quick screw."