Among the many "crash" jobs we were called upon to assist in many were the brain children of eccentric boffins and mad inventors. One of these ideas was a rush job of Churchillian urgency, allegedly originating from Pro. Bindemann or his entourage. Our high flying fighters were to fly above formations of enemy bombers, releasing coils of steel wire with bob weights to hold them down which were intended to get entangled in the bomber propellers. After frantic night and day efforts by two or three firms in the West Country to get the job done, the whole project collapsed after the first unsuccessful trials.
Foolish as some of these projects were, they were still worth while exercise, as out of them came a few unorthodox devices which would never otherwise have seen the light of day, but so many people were putting up really mad ideas to Churchill and his entourage, that later on all such ideas had to be screened by competent experts to save the waste of valuable brains and production capacity on hare brained ideas.
One aspect of war time production, which has a good deal of relevance today, was the inspection system used by the Ministry of Supply for the War Office, the Admiralty for the Navy and the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate (A.I.D.) for the Royal Air Force. Being a M.A.P. factory, the A.I.D. in our case, were also debuted to act for the other two authorities. Two, and at times four members of this directorate, under, the efficient Mr. Whitehouse, had the complete run of the factory, and were treated in every way as integral members of the organisation, except that they were Civil Servants, and had complete power of Veto over any process or product which in their view did not comply with the appropriate specification.
All critical parts had to bear their inspection stamp (all inspectors, both our own and the A.I.D. had individual code numbers) so that in the event of failure, the actual inspector who had passed the faulty part could be tracked back. The A.I.D. provided a release note with each shipment certifying their approval in the absence of which, the RAF receiving depot would not accept the shipment, nor would payment be made therefor by the M.A.P. accounts department.
This system worked very well; there were a few occasions when tempers were frayed, but rarely at management level. I regret to say this was not invariably the case, as in many factories, the A.I.D. were looked upon as interlopers; Cowbridge however, never had a purely commercial background, so they fitted into our organisation from the word "go".
In effect, the A.I.D. were there to see that the customer, the RAF, got what had been ordered, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and that substandard equipment did not get out of the factory. In our case, 90% of what we made was going into aircraft, and was crucial to the aircraft's function, of intercepting enemy aircraft, or bombing enemy territory, so that it was not too hard to convince the humblest of workers, that faulty work could mean either failure of a mission, or death of the crew or most likely, both. In thus acting as the customer's watchdog, outside the control of the production hierarchy, the system provided the necessary checks and balances necessary in any producing body.
This system was not unique to the services, as I learned from their works director that HMV had operated a similar system for some time. Originally, their inspection department had been, like in most factories today, a branch of the works organisation, but after a good deal of friction and bickering, inspection was placed under the control of the sales department, which after all, was the customer for whom their works were producing goods. As a result, quality improved and complaints were drastically reduced.
There are, today, many factories where not only are the inspectors under the control of the works production management, but actually participate in a bonus geared to the factory output - a system which is no doubt responsible for much in the way of shoddy goods such as the faulty domestic appliances and motor cars which do so much to damage our reputation at home and abroad and lead to vast imports of foreign products, often of greater reliability.
It is a sine qua non, that the inspection function should always be completely outside the control of production, preferably answerable to the Sales Department or final customer. A further advisable reform would be to charge all service repair work under guarantee to the Production Department where this is not already the case. Thus, not only would put the responsibility for quality and rectification where it truly belongs, but also keep the factory in close touch with faults which arise in the field and avoid the delays which otherwise occur.
How often do we hear of equipment continuing to be produced incorporating the selfsame faults as the service department are currently rectifying. This wartime lesson in the proper function of inspection in relation to production was lost in the post war Gadarene rush to produce anything which could be sold. regardless of quality. This strict wartime inspection was to my personal knowledge looked upon as irksome by many management's so it can easily be understood that at the first opportunity when the war ended, such management's would seek to free themselves from what they regarded as interference and a brake of productivity.
I would like to pay tribute to the A.I.D. as I knew it; I never heard a single case of any member of the Inspectorate being bribed or in any other way persuaded to overlook faulty material, and thus release to the Services, material or equipment of inadequate quality. That is not to say that faulty equipment did not get through either by inadvertence, or faulty basic design or specification.
