My influences: Noel Buckland - updated

Soon after I moved to work in East Anglia for ICL, and it became clear that my primary focus was to be on stock control and production control systems, I was introduced to a man called Noel Buckland, an internal production control consultant. When he left school, Noel had gone to a London medical school but, living in Letchworth, had secured a summer vacation job at the local factory of what must have been the British Tabulating Machinery Company. He found the manufacturing environment more to his taste than medicine and never returned to medical school.

By the time I met him Noel had been an ICL factory manager and then, after a heart attack, had stepped back into an advisory role. He and I formed an association, shortly followed by a friendship; he was a kind, generous, funny man. People began to refer to us as “The Two Noels”.

The first time I took Noel to meet a client, I discovered that he already knew many of the Production Directors with whom I was to work, which was the case the first time we carried out a customer visit together. We were shown into the Production Director’s office, seated and given coffee. Noel’s opening remark startled me. “Well, Ron,” he said, “how are the boy’s budgies?” I thought we were on a business call and this descent into trivia worried me. It turned out that Ron’s son bred, showed and sold budgerigars and Ron was very proud of him. After a short while we got down to business and I recovered my composure.

After the meeting I asked Noel why he’d started talking about budgies and he explained the concept of rapport building, which I hadn’t come across before.

The next two meetings with other customers proceeded in like fashion and, after the second, as we walked back to Noel’s car, I said, “I can see how it works, Noel, but how do you remember all this stuff?” “I don’t”, he said and from the glove box of his car retrieved a small black covered notebook. Each page was covered with notes on the various people he met in his travels. Lesson learned!

Noel had a fund of stories about his experiences and one of them was about a well known washing machine manufacturer.

They had launched a new model with a perforated stainless steel drum and demand considerably outstripped supply. The limiting factor was the availability of the perforated stainless steel from which they made the drums. They were so keen to find further supplies of this steel that they took salesmen away from their roles and directed them to search for another supplier of the steel.

Eventually a salesman came back with a sample from a small steel stockyard. Apparently, the owner of the stockyard said that he would get small quantities of the steel from an intermediary; supplies were intermittent but he would be delighted to let the washing machine company have them.

The metallurgists examined it and said that it was identical to the steel they were already using, and clearly came from the same source. Enquiries were made and a story emerged.

The washing machine company was in the habit of issuing batches of 105 sheets into the factory in the expectation that wastage would not exceed 5 sheets - a common manufacturing practice at the time. But in fact there was no wastage; the steel shop foreman was keeping a few out of each batch for himself and selling them to the intermediary at a nice profit.

Until they found out.

Noel and I visited many different manufacturing sites during the three or four years we worked together. He had a Sherlock Holmes-like ability to notice little signs which told him what was going on.

We used to walk round the factory - well, Noel used to saunter - he was really laid back. He would often stop as we walked around to engage someone in conversation - a machine operator, a man driving a fork-lift, a guy sweeping the factory floor - and knew just what to say. The conversations always ended with a smile and a handshake but they were never without purpose.

On one occasion we were given a guided tour of the works and then went back into the office to talk to our host, who said, "Well, Noel, what do you think?" Noel said, "Two things to start with. You need to sort out your tool stores - there's lots of redundant stuff in there. And your piece work rates need looking at."

Our host looked at him, open-mouthed. "How do you know that?" he said. "Well", said Noel "the boxes of tools on the top two shelves in the tool store had a quarter of an inch of dust on them. They haven't been touched for years. And many machines in the machine shop had boxes of parts kicked under them. What this tells you is that the machine operators work on them only when there are no better paying jobs to do."

I learned a lot from playing Watson to his Sherlock Holmes.