The Germ (1954)

[Music] Joe was a mighty man make no mistake about that big strapping healthy real credit to the community folks always said good guy to have around a Man of Steel through and through I'm today that tiny little germ Gotti and you'd never know it I love Joe there was too much Joe for a germ to show at first the little dandy ironworks his companies go was just like Joe big strapping mountain of a company real credit to the community folks always said good company to have around a company of Steel through and through [Music] the salesman for the little dandy ironworks were out around busy getting orders for Steve command in the shipping department were busy shipping Steve and all over the works other people were busy at their jobs [Music] each of us has his job to do they said and that's that and that's what they were doing and the men around the open hearts were busy making as much steel as possible for furnace per day busy on the day that tiny little germ of a wrong idea got in you'd never know it to look at the company there was too much company for a germ to show at first germs have a way of multiplying spreading around sneaking here and there keeping folks from fighting them out until they've got themselves dug in one of the most particular jobs anyone can have is making steel it's practically impossible it's like you're juggling eggs on a tightrope just look what they have to do they have to heat that stuff up to about 3,000 degrees in a furnace which will stand only a little more than 3,000 degrees and only for a while at that and what they've gotten too heated with doesn't make it much hotter than the steel has to be although it almost makes it hotter than the furnace can stand and they can't even use the heat the best way what they have to do is floor it across the top of course the scrap does melt and the molten pig iron is added never the race begins every minute the charge is boiling the carbon is going down and the temperature is going up nobody knows until the stuff is all melted how much carbon has to come out or just how fast the temperature will go up this time but while they're watching one go down in the go ha they also have to watch the slag and analyze it watch the steel and analyze it and add things here and there meanwhile they have to do a tricky plumbing job on a hot ladle setting in a new nozzle and stopper and getting them straight and true because even a perfect heat can be lost up by the bad pouring that results from a ladle with a runny nose and all the time the temperature in the furnace is going up and just as the carbon gets down to but not below where it should be the temperature has to be what it should be and the slag has to be what it should be and the steel ought to be what it should be [Music] then they can and all that has to happen before the heat breaks off the bottom or the roof caves in men and the label they have to keep adding things to control the analysis the temperature of the steel starts to go down but before it gets too cold but not while it's too hot they have to get all the ingots poured in clean warm properly seated moles to the right level not too high enough too low and then sometimes some more things have to be added to control oxygen in the ingot and if they have to cap it they have to do that on time and they have to know that the steel is going to rise up and hit it not too late but not too soon even then they have to let some ingots cool before they move them and let others cool during delivery to the stripper but I love them to cool because they have to heat them up again evenly all the way through not too much and not too little so that they can be properly slapped or blue they have their troubles too in fact if there's any job any trickier than making steel from melting it all the way to packing it for shipment you can have nothing anyone objected at the little dandy they were proud of the way they could make steel and well they might be they made it by the millions of terms that's what our job is they said making steel that's that boy that wasn't that that was the germ of the wrong idea that got him to the little van [Music] better take care of that said Joe's old lady the day he sneezed I'm a working man got no time for pampering myself one sneeze don't make pneumonia says Joe one Wednesday along about midnight at the germ that had gotten into the little dandy got in a good lick it happened like this they charge that was bubbling away in old number four teams inertia just about come up to snow but not quite still that whistle was just around the corner and the boys needed this one on the record to prove that they could make steel makin steel was their job so Steve stood there looking first at his watch then at the whizz kid off to one side and then at the clock again and then at the figures and then finally he decided to walk over to Lou who was going over his records and said that looks pretty close to midnight sure I mean about the 2850 to me that isn't what the thermocouples say said Lou where I've been making steel a good many years and I can tell a whistle heat I read but I can tell a heat that's ready to tap besides that look at the carbon my job's making steel not reading instruments so they tapped the heat and the germ got in it's work for the day actually the keep was a little bit cool that's the only way to account to the skull that showed up from the ladle they had plenty of trouble with the pouring but they figured out having enough luck in the conditioning yard to form through then the ingots all soaked ready we swung over to the billet mill way they win [Music] the conditioning yard kids so they kept the heat and the germ got in it's work for the day actually the heat was a little bit cool that's the only way to account for the skull that showed up from the ladle they had plenty of trouble with the pouring but they figured not having enough luck in the conditioning yard to pull them through then the ingots all soaked ready we swung over to the billet mill the way they went [Music] the conditioning yard did correct all the external faults they saw so nobody knew about the large ugly inclusions that had formed during the poor and were still in the billets the edge tests and micros weren't too good each time there was quite a conference about those inclusions they cut back and cut back and tried again and cut back some more it was sort of borderline well they said our business is making steel look at the calendar this steel and it chipping that was the germ at work it looked all right when the customer got it so he machined it into gears put a good many dollars worth of time and effort into it thank him pretty heavily on the idea that the little dandy knew its business man it was magnaflux any defect near the surface of the piece of steel you know like an inclusion will stick up like a worm on an ear a corn when you magnaflux it like this oh when the steel all came rolling back to the ironworks in a rusty heat the company found a little twin [Music] actually they were in the habit of tapping mighty good steel at the little dandy they like to tap good steel and ninety percent of the time that's what they tapped but sometimes what would happen afterwards made it a little discouraging to a tribe so hard back the day the stopper was poorly set the heat had been perfect but a leaky stopper like the one they had after number four ingot leads to scams and that's just what happened this time the scabs where the steel stream hit the side of the mold and chill were bad enough the conditioning yard did what it could they rolled the stuff on the hot strip mill mighty carefully and there's also the scale which forms on hot steel it has to be taken off to in a sheet mill this is done on a continuous picture but if they steel gets rough treatment there is dragged over dead rolls or rough guides or as pile to deepen the looping tip the resulting scratches and gouges may cause even more troubles than the scabs or scale or even skull well anyway one day Harry Jenkins picked up a can of beer and found that it was sticky [Music] furthermore it was flat furthermore added leaf naturally Harry called the corner store and the corner store called the brewery and the brewery called the can company turned out to be pinholes caused by well who know not scabs in this case must have been scale or scuffing the sad part is that was a perfect heat when they pointed but the can maker wasn't interested in the history all he saw was pinholes we can't have that he said as he reached for the phone [Music] on another occasion they were on a tonnage section over to Bill and the boys were trying to make the moles they had on the buggy stretch clear round cycle and it didn't help much that they sprays were kind of clocked all in all those moles were just too daggone hot to make it worse the steel in old 14 was also too hot from the tap in those hot molds that hot steel simply didn't trim well blow holes the conditioning yard did what it could this skin off that alligator hide and get below the brakes the steel looked alright when the customer got it he was sure the little dandy knew its business so he put it on his presses but the slippery is caused by that poor action opened up there was the devil to pay around the little dandy when that steel came back with the customers [Music] then on another occasion the customer was waiting eagerly for some alloy steel to make oil well drill rods are a tricky stuff had to be just so and he needed it pretty bad way it was being they had they punted palms knees to the ladle it was there all right two 500-pound piles the only thing was it was kind of hard to figure out where one pile left off missed another one took up even if they had been weighed right anyway they took up what might have been 500 pounds maybe a little more on the other hand it might have been a little less better put in a little more said Steve flying a bit of body English to the heat Steve had a hunch as a matter of fact he should have had his hunch the other way they had enough manganese in there to well anyway it didn't matter too much it was steel every pound of all they had to do was diverted and start over the customer had to wait a couple of more weeks only he didn't like waiting around like that one day Big Joe he that had been so strong and fine broke into a sweat over a little road he used to pick up with one hand pipe has a habit of showing up when at least one but there's always a reason for maybe two or three the reason this time was that a furnace full of perfectly good steel got over deoxidized in the ladle through a small oversight amounting to several to many bags of aluminum of course they also tossed plenty of aluminum into the molds well it would have been easy to see after they cooled a bit that they had over killed that steel the top of each ingot would probably be pretty well dish of course the slabs couldn't be cut back too far there wouldn't have been enough slab left to make place for die blocks plate when it's flattened out makes laminations laminated plates don't make good dive box Joey pulling his weight the way he used to people began to say he's putting a lot of burden on us the stock looked round and straight to the roller but then he might have been looking around himself while he rolled it it looked round and straight when the customer got it to and round and straight was what he'd ordered from the little bed but it wasn't round and straight when I say round said the customers he said it all back I want it round all the way around that's the way I want it we didn't used to get stuff like that from the little dandy better take care of that Warren chose old lady or you'll get complications complications be hang sis Joe let my innards take care of the germs I got enough to do taking care of my work it ain't as easy as it used to be one day at the ironworks he got sidetracked somehow and by the time the ingots got to the pits they were pretty cold they got the standard treatment for the normal transit time though nobody seemed to notice that they weren't quite hot enough and uniformly heated forging billets they turned out to be only that cold rolling they got when they should have been hot gave them a bad surface with wet pretty deep not on our forges said the customer take him back anybody know a source for good forging billets it was too bad about Joe complications he used to be a good guy to have around all set buddy brought it on himself when the germ of a wrong idea gets into a company complications can set him even in a company as big as the little dandy the business of the little dandy ironworks was to please its customers that's the business of any company no matter what product it delivers make it right and it will be right it pleases customers but when the people began to feel that their business was making steel and that was that the germ of this wrong idea began to divert their attention from the need for quality control because the plain fact of the matter is that you don't need quality control to make steel all you need it for is to please customers you can make steel by pouring it as hot as the furnace will standard or as cold as it'll flow but you can't please a customer that way you can deliver ingots too soon or too late and heat them too much or too little and they will roll into steel but you can't please a customer that way you can condition slab or let it go you can rough things up and say you're saving time and you will be saving time and you will be making steel but you can't please a customer that way you can ignore the book can pass along uncertainties and doubts for other people to worry about you can depend on luck and someone may turn some of it into steel maybe even the right steel but you can't please a customer that way if you don't please customers and do it profitably the business will start to slip away and the jobs in the business - and those are complications but the germ and the complications could have been kept out by remembering one simple fact you don't need quality control to make a profit all you need it for is to please customers hardly any medicine ever tastes good but when you gotta have it you gotta take it and it helps guys like Joe or anybody learn an important lesson yet don't fool around with a germ even when you're big [Music] do you Joe [Music]