Word: opm
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Last week the first steps were taken. OPM ordered capacity production at once in five industries: planes, ships, anti-aircraft guns, ammunition, tanks. Many a citizen had assumed that even under the "defense" program, these and other war industries were already at capacity. Many a citizen was wrong...
Before last week not a single U.S. aircraft plant was operating around the clock. Some, like New Jersey's Brewster Aeronautical (while shifting models) actually had been laying off hundreds of men. But OPM's order changed all that. California's Douglas Aircraft (two-and four-engined bombers) began changing from a five-to a six-day week. At Ypsilanti, Mich. Ford-men worked 24 hours daily (under big floodlights at night) to finish the biggest U.S. bomber plant (see cut). The first mass-produced four-engined bomber should roll out of Ypsilanti by spring, but handmade...
...additions to pig-iron capacity are 71 going up fast.* The scrap shortage (estimated at 10,000,000 tons for 1942) drove Lessing Rosenwald, OPM's Conservation Chief, to announce a house-to-house drive at week's end. The Steelmakers meanwhile began getting more steel into munitions by cancellation of civilian orders and rearranging mill schedules. More than that they cannot do because steelmaking is a seven-day continuous operation and they were already working near capacity...
...dramatic Detroit. This week the automakers, who hold over $4 billions in defense orders, suddenly stopped every non-defense production line, told 300,000 autoworkers to stay home. The lines may reopen on Jan. 5 but, if so, only 180,000 men will be recalled because OPM's latest January passenger-car quotas allow only 25% of the January 1941 rate. And in February there may be no output...
Ford, still honeymooning with the U.A.W., asked its men to work a seven-day week until additional men could be trained. It got "unanimous response." OPM announced this week that U.S. tank makers (Chrysler, American Locomotive, American Car & Foundry) were speeding up so fast they would hit 2,800 units monthly within a year. Current rate: 840. Meanwhile, Timken Roller Bearing (busy on Navy and tank gun mounts) told how it had planned full-time production 20 months ago. Timken's "anti-blackout" schedule uses three full eight-hour shifts, a fourth swing shift to keep equipment running...