X-heads vs J-heads: what's the difference??
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I always heard, "never buy a car built on a Monday or Friday". That would mean 40% of cars could be a little off.
No, what about you??? Is your ability to do your job any different than any other day???
There is just as much chance of them screwing it up Tue - Thur as on Monday and Friday, just like you on your job...
In a typical union plant, each worker gets their job as they bid on it and the highest seniority gets first pick...
The worker who gets that job does it every day, every week, all year long... They develop a rhythm doing that same part over and over... By doing it so many times they find out the most efficient way to get the job done...
Periodically they miss a day, whether it be a vacation day or sick day or any special circumstance that comes up and they can't make it to work that day (ie. Mondays after holidays or long weekends)... The assembly lines are divided up in sections, each section has its own supervisor... That supervisor has to figure out who is absent/missing and get every job covered for when the assembly line starts moving... And the line does not wait...
Now the supervisor has to put a substitute in that job and show them how to perform that particular operation... And has to do it for every person absent in their section... Now what if there are about 5 - 7 people absent in his section??? That supervisor is busier than a one-legged man in an *** kicking contest to get their section of the line ready for start-up...
If the line starts up before that job is covered and that part is missing, it goes in the repair station at the end of each section and the dedicated repairman for that section will fix it and send it along its way...
Now those substitute people are not used to doing that job and have to work through the learning curve to develop a rhythm for that job to keep up and do it properly... After a while they get the hang of it and things run smoothly, let's just say anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes...
So the better generalization would be to say, don't buy a car made on a day when there is high absenteeism....
