The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-02-08
EMPLOYE IDEAS SAVE TIME TO
 MODIFY B-24'S
By GAY PAULEY
hunted Prees staf CorrespOndeI

NUnited PresS StafR Correspondent
 Louisville, Ky, Feb. 8 = U.P) - American ingenuity. faced with the wartime need of getting there first with the most" Is coming through at the ConSolidated-Vultee Aircraft Corporation plant where an em- ploye suggestion program is Speed- ing Up modification of B-24 Libera- tors, the bombers that help rain deS- truction on our enemy.
 ConVair officials estimated today that employees at this division alone dn 1914 saved 330,305 man-hours, or enough to modify 165 B-24's. Come $50 suggestions were accepted dur dng the year.
 Not all suggestions are practic- able, however - and many an em- ploye idea, presented in all serious ness, Is turned down by a commit tee of department heads and shop representatives who have final say on the suggestions after they are investigated by industrial engineers.
 Ideas for cutting down man-hours or production costs are placed in boxes in the plant If a suggestion Is approved by the committee, which meets each week, the employe re- ceives cash award - amount of which is based on the expected re- turn from the suggestion.
 Cut Operation 70 P. c.
 Take for instance the suggestion of 22-year-old Margaret Higgins, Louisville, which netted her $17O and saves 70 per cent of the time required in fitting together tubes which carry a glyco-alcohol spray for propeller blades and the bomber windshield.
 By changing routes of lines from the reservoir in the fuselage, Miss Higgins suggestion eliminated II of B pieces of tubing, plus the three fittings required at each juno ture.
 Claude Martin, 28-year-old lathe operator from Corbin, Ky, did by accident what metallurgical laws said was impossible. He drilled armor plate with drill whose ma terial was softer than the plate.
 Richard Hill, native of Abbey vile, s. C., who is in charge of the suggestion program, explained that Martin experienced difficulty in drilling holes in the plate with a Specially-designed drill, which would break after four or five usings. One day in rush to get a job done, he substituted a broken high-speed drill. And 1t worked. The metal got cherry-red from friction, and crys- tallized into 8 substance harder than the armor plate. Now broken hlgh-speed drills, which cost about one-tenth as much as the special drill, are used almost exclusively.
 70 P. c. From Women
 Of some 1900 employees eligible to submit ideas, about 40 per cent in the past three months have been from women, Hill said
 Mrs. Carol Holderman, 26-year- old aSsembler, whose husband is in the Army. saves one depart ment about 675 hours out of every year with her suggestion that the F OF IA girls use a small finger Hitting knife - similar to that used in cotton mills - to cut cords after a number of electrical wires have been punched and tied together. With 8 flip of the wrist. Mrs, Hol- derman was able to tie and cut the cord with one operation where prev 1ously two had been required.
 All suggestions to be used in the modification program, the final step before the big four-engined ships go to the fighting fronts, have to be Army-approved before put into use.
 Some suggestions never get much farther than the box in the plant. One employe proposed "a hidden gold mine" of an idea, whereby he would have each employe work 9.36 hours per day, six days a week, so each could have Saturday and Sundays off. Plant officials still can't figure out calendar to fit that scheme.
 Surprisingly Simple-After
 Some of the employe devices look SO simple after put into operation, thta others wonder why they didn't think of them sooner.
 G. V. Kruse, Louisville, installed a double-needle attachment in- stead of single needle on a sew ing machine and cut out many yeards of machine travel around