"Al, the trouble is there is nothing for the guys down there to do while heat-treat is cookin' the parts. You load up one of the damn furnaces, shut the doors, and that's it for six or eight hours, or however long it takes. What are they supposed to do? Stand around and twiddle their thumbs?"
"I don't care what they do between times as long as they get the parts in and out of the furnace pronto," I say. "We could have done almost another batch of parts in the five hours of waiting for people to finish what they were doing elsewhere and change loads."
"All right," says Bob. "How about this: we loan the people to other areas while the parts cook, but as soon as the time is up, we make sure we call them back immediately so—"
"No, because what is going to happen is everybody will be very conscientious about it for two days, and then it'll slip back to the way it is now," I say. "I want people at those furnaces standing by, ready to load and unload twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
[...]
"You bet," says Bob. "But you know you're taking about two, maybe three people per shift."
"Is that all?" I ask. "Don't you remember what lost time on a bottleneck costs us?"