Watch that Gary. My wife retired from TACOM, home of absurd tolerances and lowest cost per part bidding......
if you only knew and I could tell. I can't.
I'm Seargent Schultz..... "I know nottthing"....
TACOM itself isn't all that bad, but they have about a million little "micro kingdoms" that dwell inside it. Their process inspectors are a triple joke! Rarely do they have the needed back ground to do the job, and the only thing they go by is what some clerk wrote up.
Here's a fine example (you tax payers are gonna love this!!) I'm doing something that may get the knock on the door, but who cares at this stage of the game. I worked on the M1 Abrams project for almost 15 years. The initial design of the transmission would not work (it was actually a TACOM design). We knew this before we cut the first chip on the prototypes (17 of them), but they insisted and we needed the work. Once they were done and after about two weeks on the dyno they went into a redesign mode. This time I think we built a dozen or so at close to a million dollars a piece! We told them it wasn't going to be much better, and if it stayed together it wouldn't shift gears right. Build them or loose the contract was their train of thought!! After about two or three more weeks they're back at the redesign game! This time we are to make another dozen in the tool room. We said to hold it as this one is no better than the last one. They had us go ahead and built six anyway (about a million dollars a pop). Of course they went south real quick. Then Tacom asked us if we could make it work? So they contracted us to redesign several units inside the casting plus some other things I won't talk about. The Dragon Lady wasn't slightly impressed, but whoever she reported to said build some. Seems like we were contracted to build about 17 again, and we actually built about twenty (the three were kept in house as masters to gauge off of). Of course they worked, but then Tacom made some changes inside the back of the tank. So we had to make some more minor revisions. While this was going on the Dragon Lady stepped on somebody's toes that knew his business extremely well. He applies for patents on all the hydrostatic drives as they were completely different than Tacom's, and gets them.
But it gets even better! In 1983 the price of an X1000 transmission was about $447,000 with a production rate of about 25 or 30 a month. Later they ramped up production to 90 units a month at about $150,000 a unit. Then right before going into Iraq they retooled for a 150 unit output per month. (remember this is a very low volume operation). Tacom sets the production rate per month, and will not allow you much of a cushion. But will fine the hell out of you for a late delivery. Later production slows way down and cost rise thru the ceiling. We offered to simply run a hundred fifty of them over a six week time period, and store them. This way they'd come in for well under half the cost. Nope! But we did get them to allow us to manufacture the X200 and later the XTG-411G on these machines. This seriously aided in getting the cost down and the labor and machine time was spread out a lot better. (machine time is the real killer here). While all this was going on Tacom asked us to design a power pack for several SPG projects they had in mind. Probably a hundred million dollar project that never went anywhere thanks to Congress. Then Tacom and the Marines ask us to help them develop a completely knew tracked assault vehicle for the Marines. They tests worked out very well with nothing too serious other than moving some bolt holes. Tacom plans on building the transmission in house, but somebody messed up (again?) The transmission is huge, and will not fit on the machines they planned on using! Another hundred fifty million dollar retool! (do we see a pattern yet?) Get all these new machines set (big expensive stuff), and Obama cancels the project!
While all this is going on we start getting in a few flatbed truck loads of bad X1100 gear boxes. We take them apart and go thru a part to part measuring process. Somebody sounds an alarm, and everything comes to a halt. They are out there checking equipment all over the place as the numbers to get are way out of spec. Even the material used. Then the guy that designed the hydrostats is called in, and he said we didn't build this stuff! Was made in Alabama under contract from the GAO!!! Law suits fly over the patented stuff, and we win big time. Turns out that the GAO decided to make all the spare parts at their buddy's job shops. They couldn't make the parts so the GAO (on their own without permission from TACOM) opened up the specs we used everyday. We load all the disassembled parts in crates and send them home, with a you fix it note. probably a $20,000,000 boondoggle there alone.
and some folks worry about a $100 dollar toilet seat!
gary
