Romey Everdell, The Father of Master Scheduling

Romey Everdell, June 24, 1920 – Jan. 3, 2013
 

 
 

The first time I saw Romey Everdell, The Father of Master Scheduling, he was getting beat up by a conference room full of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) business managers. He had been invited in by Ron Chesna, head of one of the business sectors, to talk about something that was new to this group — using computers to make computers. Everdell’s six-foot-plus frame was stretched up to its full height, and he was using his Cross pencil to outline just exactly — Romey always worked in great detail — a Bill of Material explosion linked to a top-level line of either forecasted or actual orders — something he called a “Master Schedule,” could revolutionize the way DEC built and shipped systems.

But they were having none of it, and the room was getting that impatient, tight ugly feel that I recognized, the edge that slips in when an “outsider” challenged DEC’s strong political, matrix management culture. I was learning how the politics — the internal fiefdoms, favors, paybacks, negotiations, trades — really ran the place, despite founder Ken Olsen’s reputed dislike for drinking, gambling and any action perceived as unethical or sleazy. This was … after all … manufacturing! And the Westminster plant was located over an hour away from headquarters, well out of KO’s esteemed line of sight.

And if Romey had only known just exactly how that massive factory generated the kind of growth and profits that DEC was becoming famous for! Each quarter the material planners gathered up stacks of 8.5x.3-inch slips of white paper marked with “RPO3” and other top level assembly products, broke them down into their component cables, boards, cabinets, etc. and went into hiding for a day at the Old Mill, a picturesque waterpower mill turned restaurant about 10 miles down the road. There we ate and drank and performed manual — paper, that is — explosions and aggregation of these hundreds of slips of paper. We hoped that what we accumulated in the various component piles could be traded, stolen or negotiated — because that was what we were good at — trading and negotiating into enough of the right parts to 1. Satisfy customer orders, or 2. Cover the long lead-time items to meet a forecast. What was missing from this system, as Romey came to learn, was something top-level that tied the whole pile of white paper slips together, something that resembled what he was selling. But it would have been beyond our electronic dreams to have traded a computer generated explosion for all those slips of paper which by the end of the day were pretty smeared and frayed.

So the beat-down in the conference room continued unabated until Romey packed up his slides, thanked his host, and left for more receptive climes. Years later, I made the same journey, this time from a competitor computer company, dragged out to the parking lot where good friend Bob McInturff, whose family owned a recruiting firm, told me about a search they were conducting for a female production and inventory control consultant. “Seriously,” Bob said as he backed me up toward the perimeter fence, “do you have anything better to do?” And I had to mumble “no,” as I was, as were most of us, cubicled into a miserable planning existence, powerless to run anything other than what Data General’s famous MRP system, called for — no creativity, no favors, no paybacks, no negotiations — in other words, no fun. This was a company that ran to The Plan, and within fifteen minutes after my arrival, I was dreaming of an exit.

What McInturff didn’t tell me until a few days later was that I was being sent out to meet the partners at an old New England industrial engineering firm, Rath and Strong. I had no expectations. I held my breath and jumped — first through two interviews with partners who, although the company was forced by a sex-discrimination suit to hire a couple female consultants if they could find them, and last, into the corner office where a massive oak desk dominated a room filled with books and reports. And behind that desk, squinting over his glasses at this new creature who had slipped in the door, sat Romey Everdell, intact, unbeaten, intent on drilling down into just what made this young applicant want to hit the road and live and breathe manufacturing systems.

That interview was the fortuitous beginning for me of a chance to work and travel with a man like no other professional I have since, or will ever meet. I am so grateful. He was tough, methodical and extremely demanding, lucky for me. While the other R & S consultants may have been waiting for the three or four females who were eventually hired to leave, Romey was in for the long haul. Our evenings onsite were filled with long and detailed discussions about how to design a system that would work for the client, and how to make that client use the system, along with other training that Romey believed we needed to master, including client management, report writing. Romey prided himself on his academic achievements — St. Paul’s School, Williams College Phi Beta Kappa, where he majored in Chemical Engineering — and he expected all of us to work equally hard.

But it was the other “stuff” that he taught, sometimes just by example, that made Romey Everdell someone from whom we could learn a different approach to life. Raised in old New York Knickerbocker (Dutch) society by staunch Republican parents, he developed a dislike for things upperclass, and somewhere in the late 60s became more of an independent liberal. He had great compassion and took an approach to training newcomers — every night after supper, no drinks, no carousing — that I believe he first learned at St. Paul’s School, where he mentioned that older students had responsibility for bringing along the younger ones. This was the kind of generosity and compassion that most surprised those of us newbies who were fortunate enough to work with him.

And there were of course more personal and colorful stories about this man that filled in the spaces around his business life. He was a lifelong ski racer who only surrendered his poles in his 80s when he found that some balance problem caused him to fall down, repeatedly — “Silly,” he said.

 At age forty-something he splurged and bought a performance Mustang that he careened through the side roads of Concord, Massachusetts, the pristine suburban community where he and his first wife Rusty, a sailor who at age 60 beat Ted Turner, raised their family.

 And there was the Navy Cross he won at age 23 when Lieutenant JG Everdell piloted his dive bomber into a Pacific air battle, hitting the Japanese battleship Nagato. Based on the USS Franklin, the young flier became a war hero, when, per the Presidential Citation “in action against enemy Japanese forces in the Sibuyan Sea during the Air Battle of Leyte Gulf on 24 October 1944…by his superb flying ability, indomitable fighting spirit and cool courage, maintained at great personal risk, Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Everdell contributed immeasurably to the extensive and costly damage inflicted on the Japanese fleet in this vital war area. His conduct throughout this action reflects great credit upon himself, and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

It’s difficult to sum up the legacy of Romey Everdell. I like to think that he was a critical transitional leader who ushered us out of an over-inventoried, under-managed approach to manufacturing that the US rode for 30 years post World War II. Although he was trained in quality and industrial engineering methods by the likes of Rath and Strong’s Shewhart Award-winning Dorian Shainin, his connections with IBM, Ollie Wight and others pioneered an integrated approach to manufacturing systems that led us to the more powerful and comprehensive applications we have today. And toward the end of his career with R & S he supported the beginnings of our work with “Japanese” production techniques, starting with JIT and Shingo’s little green book.

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. Psalm 37, v. 37.