John, the new salesman, was excited about his new company car. His boss would spend over $130,000. on the top of the line luxury vehicle. Plus, the company maintenance team was responsible for the entire motor pool. “We Keep Them Running…” was the shop motto.

Precisely at 3000 miles, he took the car to Jack, the maintenance supervisor.

“What’s that you are doing, Jack?” he asked.

“Taking off the air filter. It’ll only get dirty, and the car runs fine without it.”, Jack said. “That muffler’s got to go too. It will be nothing but a bucket of rust in a few years – a real maintenance nightmare.”

As for those lug nuts on the tires, you don’t need them all, and it saves us time when we pull the wheels and check the brakes.” Jack smiled. “After all, we don’t want you going out of here with brakes that don’t work!”

John stuttered, “But, but, the engineers who built the car…”

Jack interrupted. “Oh, engineers don’t know everything. After all, its our job to ‘keep them running.’ Don’t worry, after a PM we always have parts left over, but almost everybody drives out of here!”

John, our salesman, couldn’t wait to tell his boss. “You won’t believe what is going on down in the motor pool.”

His boss replied, “I’ve just seen the report. Isn’t it great! They have cut the number of spare parts they need to inventory, reduced the labor hours per preventative maintenance, and cut the PM budget 20%!”

“But look what they have done to the cars! They always stall and have to be cranked again at stoplights. They sound terrible, and they don’t steer properly.”

“You stop at stop lights anyway – no time lost there. You’re here on time today aren’t you?” John’s boss said. ‘Tell you what, if you feel so strongly about this, write up a cost-benefit analysis and prove the maintenance guys are wrong, and we’ll consider it.”

John took out a piece of paper. “Miles per gallon”, he started. “No. Not enough money. How about reliability? Hmmm. Not enough data – maybe in a couple of years. But wait! There won’t be anything to –compare- to!”

“Ok.” He thought. “How about that engineering textbook? No. They’ll say ‘Its fine in theory, but…’ Oh! This is hopeless!”

And he was right!          …to be continued…