Obstacles to Production I -- Plastic Liner Procurement III

In February 1942, the Office of The Quartermaster General (OQMG) made it known they desired a push to immediate production for the new M-1 plastic liner. The Standardization Branch noted that, based on their best assessment of the industry's current capability, "high-pressure" forming the number of liners requested in the initial contracts by the desired due dates would require just under one hundred molds. They recommended establishing standards for steel and Kellering uniformity, even if it would delay the start of initial production, and ideally, a single prime contractor should make all molds.

In a move of confident optimism, the OQMG ignored the concerns of the Standardization Branch and directed the Chicago Quartermaster Depot (CQMD) to press forward with contracts and begin production as quickly as possible. With the intent of facilitating early production, the OQMG made each liner manufacturer a prime contractor responsible for all aspects of the liner's production and gave them the freedom to pursue the manufacture of molds in whichever way they felt best suited their ability to achieve early production.

Did you know:                                                                                                    

In April 1942, the CQMD sent officers on field trips to liner production facilities and found Inland at a standstill due to the incorrect kellering of the majority of their steel molds. After inspecting the defective tooling, the CQMD gave Inland permission to use 12 of the molds to help get production moving again. However, frustrations escalated in June when the CQMD made a follow-up inspection to find that Inland had only chosen to put three of the approved dies into service, pushing their anticipated deliveries even farther behind.

Do you think this development was taken into consideration when the decision was made to drop Inland from the liner program?

As plastic liner production approached mid-March 1942, each prime contractor was working to acquire the molds they needed to meet their production quota. In April, the CQMD inspectors reported that only minimal production of the liner had yet occurred, as every firm was experiencing significant delays in obtaining the steel and access to the Keller machines they needed to make their molds. The reason for these delays was the liner firms' A-1-i priority rating, which was too low to compete with other concerns that required the same steel and access to keller machines but had the highest A-1-a priority certifications.

Several factors contributed to the lack of foresight in recognizing the need for a top-level priority rating for liner procurement. The urgent need for the liner led to a concentrated effort to expedite its production; the OQMG had a standard rating of A-1-i, which, before the liner's assignment, had consistently sufficed for the procurement needs of items under their jurisdiction, and the Quartermaster had a system in place for the purchase, stockpiling, and allocation of the standard materials of their trade from their depots.

However, with the onset of war, the Office of Production Management had placed materials and access to machinery critical to war production on a restricted use list. This list included several critical materials necessary to fabricate the plastic liner, including the steel required for making the high-pressure molds needed to start production, which could now only be accessed through the priority certificate system.

After realizing that a lack of priority certification was hindering production, Brig. Gen. L. Corbin, the supply chief of the OQMG, wrote a letter to the Army and Navy Munitions Board outlining the situation. In response, the board issued priority A-1-a certificates as a special gesture to get initial production underway. Despite this move, confusion within the QMC over which branch had the authority to issue these priority certificates continued to stall attempts to correct this oversight. The OQMG officially granted the CQMD the authority to issue priority certificates in May 1942, thereby permanently eliminating this bottleneck.

In the end, granting each prime contractor the autonomy to develop their own process for liner making in the pursuit of attaining early production had the opposite effect. Because there were no overarching standards governing the development of this new process, firms selected a varying range of material specifications, leading to different types of steel used to make their molds. This greatly complicated the ability to troubleshoot production issues as they arose, as there could be no overriding solution, forcing each firm to navigate their own unique learning curve. Despite putting molds into production immediately upon completion, this obstacle alone caused a 5-month delay to full production before enough molds were active to meet demand.

Now you know….