My next fourteen years in the Management Services Division.

· So what’s this then?

The Management Systems Division was, in 1977, THE place to do systems development work, and the area I’d landed in, as a result of my rather bold drawing of Stores II (a project on the MSD drawing board for the mid-1980’s), put me in on the ground floor of major, large scale efforts the likes of which I’d not seen. In the Production Planning Department, a program of mine might have run weekly, at best, with most being utilized on a monthly basis. The technology was key punched cards, assembled into programs with job control language necessary to execute the programs provided by Data Processing and Payroll (DP&P). Reports were then printed and distributed to planners who used them as reference materials for decisions, usually, or in some cases as guidelines for operations.

My new job was writing programs from specifications that would be executed on-line, perhaps as much as fifty thousand times in a week, AND these programs would created actual working documents that drove actions. These initial actions were within the Purchasing area of PARS, and my first assignment was a program called General Changes. I did not know at the time, but nobody wanted to do General Changes because of its complexity and scope, so they gave it to the new guy. They didn’t know the new guy was wondering if he was up for the job, but as they say, “the rest was history”.

It never occurred to me that people would actually prefer technology to utilization, but in this new assignment it became apparent to me that I was more interested in how to use technology within an organization, and everyone else was interested in technology itself. This was due to my lack worry concerning the scale of use these applications were running in. You can imagine if a problem occurred in something that ran fifty thousand times per week, that’s a big deal. I was used to once per week, or monthly activity levels, so when I attended my first “professional” technical walk through of my attack at General Changes, both the review board, who walked into the room and noticed nine “piles” of programs for review (something that had not been done before), and I, who had not had nitpicking technocrats pick apart my work, were in for new experiences. Suffice it to say, after several days of minor criticisms by the very folks who were afraid to do General Changes in the first place, and who were now my “work-mates” and represented my competition, so to speak, and who represented the high bar and measure my abilities, it became obvious to me that, yes, indeed, I was capable of success in this new major league, AND I did notice that my daring and confidence were not matched by anyone within this new sphere. Having arrived and devoured my initial assignment, programming soon fell by the wayside. The path of jobs in the Management Systems Division were varied, but generally speaking programmers came in at the bottom, development programmers were better off than maintenance programmers, but none the less, this was entry level. Next up, designers, then project leaders, then project managers, then management levels (there were several). At this time, the Management Systems Division merged with the Industrial Engineering Division, actually it was an over throw by the Industrial Engineers, the guys in the suits beat out the technology lovers, to form the Management Services Division. At the time, didn’t matter to me BUT that political move made, really, a great deal of difference in the near, and longer term future.

I completed my “stint” as a programmer pretty much with General Changes and, as a designer was needed for the next phase of PARS, the Receiving function, and my by now friendship with David Winter (you remember, the guy who wanted to know if I wanted the long, or short story, who was a second-in-command type on PARS) didn’t hurt, and I was appointed “Designer” for the R part of PARS. Receiving at Kodak Park was a truck unloading process whereby Purchase Orders were matched against incoming materials and, if the delivery data was correct, packages were routed to the appropriate ordering area, and receipt data created that resulted in payables information. This matching effort, of materials, packages and delivery areas was complex as Kodak Park was spread over ten miles and constituted hundreds of buildings with thousands of delivery locations and receipt responsibilities. This was handled with several pages of “cloud diagrams” which defined the flow, associated processing applications, data related information, and connections to upper level control fields (as the technical people like to refer to them, but really, it’s organizational) for processing into the higher-level steps. We actually got a woman who was a kind of uppity level teacher to do some real work and program a key function that would process a vast majority of packages traveling through receiving, and she learned about reality vs. theory of teaching by doing a real job. I think that was my favorite accomplishment, project wise, during this time frame, and in addition, this is when Jason, my first son was born, my affair with Susan the photographer occurred, my reconciliation with Lynn which resulted in Joshua, and, hey, it was the best and the worst of times. I also had my first promotion since becoming a “professional”, from wage grade thirty-nine to forty-one, and was delighted. Much later in the game, when I became responsible for giving out promotions, it was revealed that this elevation was a standard progression, given to all those who had not committed atrocities, which at the time I had not. Oh well, ignorance is bliss.

The PARS piece of Receiving was a huge success and the designer (me) was on the professional upswing while suffering the lost of a marriage, two small children, and his love, lost to Alaska becoming a photographer. He chose to stay and “do the right thing”. This was the beginnings of Awareness as an attempt to one day be able to explain to his children why he no longer lived with them, and it became the period of time where professionally, and personally he grew the most, and the fastest, expanding towards the future while becoming distant from his children.

· From PARS to MACS (Materials Accountability and Control System)

As it turned out, there was a corporate rule that said, “Those who’ve worked on Purchasing and Receiving can’t work on Accounts Payable and so once again, as luck would have it (although by now I knew I was destined), the next step in what really was Stores II, remember the ten year plan, was about to move towards fruition.

You see, when most of that “stuff”, purchased by Eastman Kodak via the PARS purchasing function comes in through receiving, it goes to warehouses for storage. The owner within manufacturing calls it in, from one of ten or so large warehouses across Kodak Park when these materials are needed to re-supply internal inventories, or, in some cases, for use upon receipt within manufacturing. As it turned out, Kodak Colorado had just finished building a system that took control of its warehouse (one, as I remember), and David Winter and I, along with Joe Butkowski from Stores Warehousing, and Don Fry, THE database expert, launched a project that would take the Colorado system, copy it to Rochester, add the additional functions needed to support an operation that was ten or so times bigger than Colorado, and install the “cloned” system across Kodak Park, warehouse by warehouse. The four of us, and we did come to think of ourselves as the four horsemen, for sure, had $100,000 and six months to do this proposed project, taking another system from another development site and using it rather than developing another from scratch AND, more importantly, taking a manual cardex control file process used in warehousing to process hand written, mailed requests for material shipments/movements to an on-line, database, terminal driven environment, a leap of two levels of technology. The management of our division saw this effort as a $100,000 project and came to the conclusion that it must not be much of an effort as they were, by this time in 1979/1980 approving projects in the millions of dollars, so we were pretty much left on our own to do a magnificent task that had not been done before. As the four of us worked at this effort we were left, pretty much, alone by the politics of the times. David Winter was the point person to our Management, securing funding and writing the required papers. Joe Butkowski was the Stores, Warehousing guy who took care of the customer management. Don Fry was the technical expert who made the internal modifications to the Colorado software. I made the modifications to the external portion of the Colorado software and did the implementations with the warehousing operations people. We were, as a team, much stronger than any one of us, individually, and I think I was the luckiest of the bunch to be “on the shop floor” learning everything I could about people under stress during massive change.

As it became apparent to “the four horsemen” that we would succeed (probably after the first of ten warehouses was installed, we upped the stakes to the Stores Management team as Joe Butkowski challenged them with using the same warehousing system we were establishing across all their warehouses in the main Stores locations, and sub-stocks, across Kodak Park. A good description of the main Stores location, and its accompanying sub-stocks would really be to think of a place like Home Depot, anything from stationary items to pipes, to electrical motors, anything needed to support operations could be ordered through Stores main locations and their sub-stocks. The MAJOR difference here was volume, which turned out to be over 50,000 transactions per day. We asked for an additional $50,000 and, as the implementation of warehousing continued, we began the necessary changes to grab hold of the main Stores locations. I remember we ran into some political attacks at this time from our own department, mostly questioning the ability to handle these never before attained volumes, but we pushed ahead (actually, Don Fry told them to go fuck themselves, in nicer terms, of course) and succeeded by the summer of 1981.

There were NO parades, there were no congratulations from our management, and we were pretty much pushed out of the way by the Stores Management team as they took their new piece of work to the highest levels of the company for their “atta boys”. We had done what had never been done before. We had cloned a system from another site, expanded it ten fold, and expanded it again to exceed volumes never even visualized, and had been left on our own to appreciate this accomplishment which establish a new high bar for volume related activities within new development efforts and, thereby, changed all the possibilities for future development work at Eastman Kodak. These new directions all came to pass. Don Fry went back to technical supervision of the database group. Joe Butkowski became frustrated with Stores Management and retired shortly after we finished Macs for Stores. David Winter was assigned to a major accounting project and I remained of continuing support, maintenance, of the efforts we had installed.

I hated maintenance, to say the least, and so, for a year or more I held my nose and did the best I could until one day when the phone ran and an offer, from out of the blue by Larry Becker, took me off to my next development effort on a special project, developing the new computer systems base for the Kodak Medical Products Blood Analyzer effort. I was thrilled and escaped leaving Macs in the capable hands of “fast Eddie Rosek”, a Data Process and Payroll escapee with great capability and a need to please. It was a win/win and I headed for the promised land of Medical Products, Chuck Gardner, Ralph Harding and Larry Becker.

It’s important to understand the politics of the day here, so click on “Politics” for a description of the real driving forces that shaped a future for Eastman Kodak.

· Raw Material Inventory (RMI)

Upon arrival at Medical Products, it became apparent to me that they really did not have any plan, and were making it up as they went along, and, hey, that’s what I signed up for, so I submitted, after the prerequisite two week “study” of the process, a three phased effort that could define a forward movement. The first step was a Solution Inventory and Laboratory Management System, which would cover their manufacturing phase and its required testing. The second phase was a raw material inventory system (interesting enough, this was the counter effort to MACS, in that it “counted” what the department owned once it moved it on to site, eliminated it from “MACS”), and the third, and final effort was a planning and scheduling effort, above the inventory available across the site necessary to run projected volumes (connections to Purchasing, available). I called this “The Red Book”, because I published it in a red cover, and it was hastily accepted with NO changes.

Step one, Solution Inventory and Laboratory Management, was accomplished; no sweat other than the indifference of local management, to whom I sent the following project update letters, known as “The Lolita Letters”. All’s well that ends well, and the first success led to the second step of my plan, The Raw Materials and Inventory System, which would change my life, again taking me to places I had defined but not know of.

Step two, Raw Material Inventory, became very political, as the sponsorship of the Medical Products project, the Paper Manufacturing Division, agreed that implementation was to be much broader than just Medical Products because everyone at Kodak Park had a need for this efforts functionality. The scope of the effort was expanded, and after a sales pitch across all potential areas, an implementation plan was defined that took the Raw material Inventory System from Solvent Coating to Paper Manufacturing, to Film Manufacturing and Paper Support Manufacturing and, finally, to Roll Coating. The functions supported the movement of materials from each of the fourteen or so Kodak Park warehouses to each of the manufacturing departments requesting these materials for use, and linked the internally stored materials to the Kodak Park site testing system so that release testing could be accomplished and the materials released for use, or condemned, reworked or retested. This effort started off with Solvent Coating because a beautiful fellow named Joe South said, “Hey, those other guys want to make fun of Solvent Coating and call us a country club, but I’ll tell you what, country clubs are where the pros hang out and once we’ve done this, which we will, the others will have to come along and match us, and that’s how this will happen”. I remember smiling, knowing this would be the best effort of my career, and two years later, when RMI was completed, and fifty or so people across Kodak Park had helped drive it, and been lifted up to better career opportunities, and Kodak Park had a single set of connected raw material inventory and testing systems, the company stood at the ready to move to step three of the project plan, Planning and Scheduling. It was just at this time that, as I described in the political update (above), that the constant project over-runs, dissatisfied customers, and now corporate cost saving pressures as a result of FUGI drove all new development efforts to a halt, and “Common Systems” and packages became the way of the future.

I had not, nor had I ever had any sponsorship, or even defenders. Others took the credit for my work, though I did obtain my final promotion from Jim Ballinger (as he said he would, he promoted me from wage grade forty-one to forty-three, which was a supervisors, or senior level), and after the greatest accomplishment had been achieved, I found myself at a stand still. The Planning and Scheduling effort, the final connecting and driver piece, would not be done by me and all the work accomplished would actually be scrapped, replace with “Common Systems” across Kodak Park. Development moved to Kodak Office as a more global approach was addressed.

· Politics and meanings.

At the time it was impossible for me to understand why the powers that be could not understand the possibilities right in front of their faces, but they were playing a far different game than I was. I had always thought it was job, or duty, to do the best I could to leave what I found in better shape than when I first encountered it, while in actuality, the real game was to get as much for your self, with as little effort, avoiding all risks and taking credit for anything you could manipulate your self into position to do so. This “Common Systems” thing was really the next wave for those “in power” to remain so, feed their friends and tell the higher ups what they wanted to hear. At the time I was just a forty-one level Project Manager who had graduated from RIT night school, and while I did have an impeccable record of successes, the powers that be were not going to listen to me and buck corporate management, they were going to give them what they wanted. So, as the sun sank in the west and the corporate Information Systems guys (now called IS/IT) came on station to begin building the new, impossible dream, I slinked off to Photochemicals and became the Project Manager for the first installation of AMAPS (the package the company had purchased to perform all integrated materials, manufacturing, purchasing and accounting functions) at Kodak Park. If you can’t fight ‘em, what the fuck, join ‘em.

Up to this point, and by now it’s 1987, I had finished Awareness, though at the time it was several individual books, and was well into Transitions. My marriage had broken up, Jason and Joshua were born, Susan had gone off to Alaska, and Barbara had done her numbers. My marriage to Kathy, and her daughter Jennifer was just about on the rocks as I accepted my next assignment to Photochemicals. I was a walking mix of knowledge and losses while taking up painting, no less.

· So what’s this then (AMAPS, Two Time Big Time)

Photochemicals and Jackie Hill.

As I had been, basically, a people person and NOT technically oriented, it was obvious to me, as I’d learned during my RMI days, that “the team is what counts, not the project”. It was this approach I embraced as a smooth, black woman named Jackie Hill took my coat, and hanging it upon her “personal” coat rack asked me, “So, what can you bring to this effort”? And me, just promoted and really not understanding, or caring about politics, just thinking the project was the right “thing” to do, and not having a clue about corporate evil says, “I can, through teamwork, put Photochemicals “on the map” as the first installation of the new corporate package (AMAPS), and set a blueprint for others to follow”. I should have paid more attention to her forward lean at just about this time, but I just took it for politeness, rather than the opportunism it really was. I knew nothing at this point in my career, other than doing the best I could, and leaving things better off than when I found them. Jackie Hill hired me to be the Project Manager for the initial installation of AMAPS at Kodak Park, and I began picking up the pieces of the mess two local “guys” had made trying to do the project as some half-assed computer installation rather that a change in business processes (see, I’d begun to talk “corporate”).

The deal here in Photochemicals was not to implement a computer system, but rather to implement a business change that included formal rules and regulations about how you did what you did (Bill of Materials), and who maintained that (a master data update and control function), what you did (Master Scheduling, that looked out six months for available capacity, materials and labor), and a daily scheduling process that printed out detailed instructions for shop floor operations (Dispatching, using labor planning on a week by week basis within a “fixed” zone of four weeks, or so), and last but not least accounting, who added up the actual cost of jobs vs. the planned cost of jobs, to determine how well we did against expectations, monthly. It’s critical to have the correct people appointed to the team, if you want to succeed, so after a study recommending how to organize and, more importantly, who should represent each area of the effort, it was up to Ms. Hill to finalize the appointments offered up as recommendations, and to her credit, she did.

Packages are not that flexible, so the main trick was to keep the scope inside the functionality, which had some leeway, called “bolt-ons” and could provide a few necessities not included. These were basically defined as political giveaways that were not worth the fight, and to include some power force within the project it became necessary, upon occasion, to “give ‘em what they want rather than make a battle over a small point”.

The project to install AMAPS in Kodak Park Photochemicals took about seven months, eliminated the local “systems” expert and replaced him with a professional systems team, installed an on-line requirements planning effort that linked to the official purchasing processes, and provide a single set of accounting numbers to be utilized as a measurement of operational efficiency. This was the first such implementation at Kodak Park, and was accomplished on January 1^st, 1988.

As a result of the success, I asked the Project team to write a report and submitted it to me that detailed, in their opinion, why our project had been a success. I planned to circulate this report to other areas that were in the project implementation phase, so they could learn what we had done, copy it, and hopefully attain the same level of success we had. The compilation of the individual reports was published, and Jackie Hill was pissed off, to say the least. It seems, in her mind, that I had somehow, through the issue of these reports, which were written mostly by her own troops, taken, single handedly, credit for the success of the project and, thereby, NOT given her the credit she deserved, or what ever. Her complaints were addressed to my boss, and as he and I walked to a meeting with his boss (my bosses boss), to discuss my behavior as relating to the success of this project and the pissing off of Ms. Hill, he had a massive heart attack and fell over, basically dead on the floor fifty feet down the isle of the way to see Frank Allen, the big kayuna of the Management Services Division, who would decide what to do with the likes of me.

Once again a massive success with credit absorbed by others, whom in this case attacked me personally, and as my defender falls over dead with a heart attach I am appointed his temporary successor with responsibilities that include Ms. Hill as a client. It’s no small wonder I wrote There’s No Such Thing as a Coincidence at this time, and the painting of Dr. Ted Evans falling over dead on the way to my “justification” meeting aptly adorns the title page.

My personal life made a move for the better as I had met Judy (in Photochemicals, which I’m sure added to Ms. Hills aggravations with me) and with leaving Kathy and Jennifer, marrying Judy and, basically, not going to work for six or so months, I began editing my previous works into what has now become Awareness, and working on Transitions and its various parts (Giving, Balance and There’s no such thing as a Coincidence). Painting also took off, and frankly I wondered if I was at the end of my Kodak career, ironically, after yet another great accomplishment.

Dr. Ted Evans returned from the dead, his heart attach had been very serious but not fatal, and “encouraged” me to come back to work on, as he said, “a more regular basis”, which I did. In January of 1989, almost one year to the day since the heart attack, I accepted the job as Project Manager for the installation of AMAPS into the Kodak Park Roll Coating Division. I was encouraged and confused, but looked forward to yet another opportunity and Roll Coating, as roll coaters like to think of it, is THE base from which the universe of Kodak begins.

Roll Coating, Mike Marmo, “Big Ed” Hoffman, and “Little Ed” (a.k.a. Mr. Tomato Head) Smith.

Well, it was January of 1989 and the rest of the management Services Division was busy making messes of installing packages (see Politics II for an update), so it became necessary to define a rationale business case for each project being implemented. In our case, we used the selling of base inventory, which are very large rolls (get it, roll coating) of various materials used to put emulsion coatings upon. These rolls were manufactured by Roll Coating, at the request of Film and Paper Sensitizing, and held in inventory, owned by Roll Coating, until they were “summoned” by sensitizing and used to make the next phase of Kodak products. Now not always was an entire roll used in the process, for various reasons. When a roll was completely used it was transferred from the Roll Coating books to the Sensitizing set of books, and “sold”, sort of. The rolls that were not completely used up REMAINED on the Roll Coating books and, guess what, were sometimes never used again because they were “short” and therefore represented sub-optimal setups at the coating stations. The amount of inventory that Roll Coating “owned” was substantial, and was created for and at the request of Sensitizing, so the business case became simple:

· You, Sensitizing, send us an order for what you want, how much and when.

· Roll Coating will produce the product for you on the date you request it.

· You will own the roll upon successful testing, insuring quality.

· These inventories will be transferred to Sensitizing books.

That was remarkably simple, like all the rest of the businesses in the world yet a “new” idea within Kodak, and this strategy and business plan formed the basis for the Roll Coating implementation. I was working with a great fellow named Mike Marmo who had been assigned to the effort by his boss, “Big Ed” Hoffman, who looked like a dead ringer for Steven King, very serious and very well connected for, after all, he grew up in the Roll Coating culture as a golden boy and was, after all, steering the Division that was “the base” for all of the Kodak universe. The common phrase was, “If it wasn’t for Roll Coating the emulsion would fall on the floor”, which I suppose was true, but kind of assumed sensitizing was a bit retarded. It’s helpful at this point to also realize that Sensitizing were the Gods of Kodak because that’s where the value of the materials really jumped up. If rolls were, lets say valued at ten (10), then sensitizing rolls were valued at a thousand (1000), so there was some animosity, or culture clash, between these two customer/supplier Divisions.

As we presented the business case to “Big Ed” Hoffman, I remember telling him that previous to this “sale” of inventory, by the way like how the rest of the world does business, “Roll Coating was riding in the back of the Kodak bus, but now, when you’re selling your products to your customers, you are DRIVING the bus”, and “Big Ed” smiled and said, “I like that”, and the project was off to a fast start.

THE thing I’d learned from the beginnings of my time as a Project Manager is the team IS THE THING, so it became critical that we have the best people available. Now, those of you who know realize that this is a difficult, at best, criteria, because the best people are usually working on what they do best, which usually is not updating a Divisions infra-structure. These battles require stating the case for competence, and trusting, in this case “Big Ed” Hoffman or the responsible manager, assigns the correct individuals.

Our team quickly formed up, with Mike Marmo and I trying to keep the tiller pointed in the right direction from a management perspective. The “Chief” of the planners was an old ass kisser that Mike and I agreed not to pay any attention to, and he, the ass kisser, after hearing Mikes and my plea for “his best people, because “Big Ed” would be really displeased to hear he’d done otherwise”, assigned Paul Gaurachini (the brain) and John Clement (mad dog) to the Master Scheduling effort, and Phil Sheehan (bird) to be our shop floor guy, assisted by “the lovely Lisa”. An internal guy, Gary Kohonek, was assigned directly by “Big Ed” to be the chief of master data (critical role), and Gary would go on to build all the bills of material that drove the entire project (it was this assignment that showed us the true “Big Ed”). The accountants fucked up and assigned a moron to begin with, but a kick ass woman named Laurie Stafanski, who more than filled the bill, especially when she wore her short, red dress, soon replaced him but ah, I digress. The technical team was composed of Tom Panic, no kidding, a great name, and Jim Arena (tough guy), and they, along with Ed the Aquarius shop floor system guy, and Dwight Roeters (Mr. Big Head), well, there wasn’t anything we couldn’t do. A beautiful kid named Doug Neff, an Industrial Engineer no les, became “Doug, the up front man” as he learned his job was not, as he had said, “finding things for people to do”, but rather teaching customers how to adapt to the new world that he, along with our excellent team, was changing for them right in front of their eyes. It was the best of times, again.

On January 1^st, 1991, the Roll Coating Division began selling rolls to Sensitizing from both their manufacturing complexes, and this team, which would be my final team, celebrated their tremendous successes by keeping their heads down, working through a barrage of initial problems, and enjoying, as only those who’ve been on championship teams can, a victory both personal and corporate, that remains in all our hearts to this day. It was a great accomplishment.

Last but not least, I forgot to mention “Little Ed”, or Mr. Tomato Head as we came to refer to him. “Little Ed” was “Big Ed’s” assistant, and was, for the most part, incompetent. “Big Ed” really didn’t surround himself with anybody who could be present a threat, and “Little Ed” fit the bill to a tee. “Little Ed” took up commenting on the possibility of our project being successful just as we were about to go into production, and his comments were all negative. When he was confronted he, of course, denied saying anything negative, but we all knew. He really did try to sabotage our efforts, but was overcome by the sheer will of the effort and hard work of all those who were determined “Little Ed” would not be right. Actually, “Little Ed” helped motivate us (he’d probably say that’s what he was trying to do, but that would NOT be true). There’s always a “Little Ed” around, maybe two, so find them early, weed them out, and don’t let the negatives get you down.

I was now done with my systems career. Two time doing AMAPS packages was enough, and there were no more development efforts available because of the messes and over-runs and, frankly, the confusion at this time about Personal Computers and Common Systems, so I took an assignment back in Photochemicals as an assistant to the Division Manager, Dave McConnel to, as he described, “get me some of those team things”. The world of Kodak was now moving towards empowered teams, and hey, me as THE team guy for the past several years was going to take a shot at manufacturing. I actually thought I had a sponsor as well, and things were looking good as I left Management Services, after fourteen years, joining the Leadership Team of the Photochemicals Division, headed up by what I thought would be my sponsor, Mr. Dave McConnel.

for a more complete story, click www.howardbeatty.com