I'm so glad, I didn't want to come across as unsupportive but I'm a realist. I know how frustrating it is to hear the company complain about the increasing cost of doing business and ask you for your input, then just ignore it. The last place I worked our bonuses depended entirely on company profits. One department was holding up the rest of the plant because they were unable to deliver the necessary equipment from storage on time. There were meetings galore, brainstorming, Kaizoning etc. The solution was very simple and EVERYONE knew it. These people all went to break at the same time. They did not follow our company's standard 15/30/15 minute breaks either. We worked from 2 - 10 pm. They went into the breakroom from 4-5, from 7-8 and from 9-10. Deliveries for that department arrived at 4:30. They were supposed to inspect and accept or reject shipments. Since they could not be bothered, the driver came into the breakroom, they signed the manifest and we had no idea what was delivered.

No one from the Plant Manager down to their immediate supervisor had the balls to stand up and say anything about it. My boss did throw a fit one time. He had two machines (to the tune of 1k a minute each our cost fine not included) down waiting for them to deliver patterns. There was a ship in the harbor literally waiting for these parts, the company was being fined by the hour for late delivery. The ship was only going to wait for so long, if we didn't get them finished on time the company would have been forced to pay to FLY I don't know how many tons of parts to the ships next port of call.

In the breakroom was the Plant Manager, Production Superintendent, and all the rest of upper management. Boss came into the breakroom at 4:30 and and asked where his patterns were, they stated that they were on break and would deliver them once their break was over. He went to get them himself but it turned out that one of the patterns that was delivered was damaged and in required them to do their job to repair it. He came back into the breakroom 15 minutes later, broken part in hand and slammed it on their table and said "fix it NOW you've been on break for 45 minutes I needed these patterns an hour ago."

I was walking into the breakroom for the first episode, and was getting ready to leave when he came for the second. Inside I was screaming with joy, FINALLY someone stood up to them and in front of all of upper management. Well my boss was written up, they did not appreciate the way he dealt with the situation. They gave the department in question more man power, but still they all went to break at the same time and stayed in the break room 3 of the 8 hour shift.