Word: knudsens
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...carnation-pink William Knudsen made one of his simple we-can-do-the-job speeches, punctuated by the sees with which he likes to end sentences. OPM announced that it wanted the industry to double its scheduled 1942 arms output to $5,000,000,000, that it would set up a joint management-labor board to speed conversion. The Army & Navy announced that they had $5,000,000,000 worth of orders for the industry to take over immediately...
Returning from lunch, the delegates found Bill Knudsen poring over the Army & Navy's $5,000,000,000 shopping list. He began abruptly...
When Detroit really gets going on defense, the big outfits may make as much money (before taxes) as on cars. Their sales, at least, will be enormous; the $5 billions in deliveries Knudsen asked for 1942 is nearly twice their sales in a normal peacetime year. But meanwhile the conversion will be painful for everybody...
Tipoff: the industry branches, which were one of the mainstays of Barney Baruch's organization in World War I, have been weak in this war, divided between Knudsen-Hillman and Leon Henderson. OPM took them all over last fall, since Pearl Harbor has intensified its efforts to make them a real policy bridge between Army & Navy and industry. Significantly Phil Reed is the policy head, not the production or sales genius...
Tipoff: G.M. is going to war. Dick Grant was Productionman Bill Knudsen's opposite (sales) number at Chevrolet in the twenties, when G.M. revolutionized the motor industry by using sales forecasts to schedule production rather than vice versa. Such a man, while serving G.M.'s wartime interests, can also serve the U.S.'s by speeding up procedure. With orders like the $5 billions announced this week (see p. 61) pouring into Detroit, it will take a quick and skilful hand just to hold the funnel...