A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

60 ■ A CLASS WITH DRUCKER
ship. These ships were so cheaply built and basic in design that the ships
weren’t even expected to remain in use more than five years. They were
slow, bulky, and inefficient. However, they had a major advantage and
that was the reason that they were built. They could be constructed much
faster than any other cargo ship. This was the critical factor. It only took
about eight months for each ship to be built from start to finish. This was
a significant improvement over the time it took to build a merchant cargo
ship previously.
“Unfortunately, there was still a problem,” <strong>Drucker</strong> went on. “Though
England was the first great seafaring nation <strong>with</strong> centuries of experience
in shipbuilding, it still took experts and skilled workers to build a ship,
even a vastly simplified design like this one. Britain was fully engaged in
all aspects of fighting the Germans. The manpower, shipyards, and production
facilities to build the fleets needed simply didn’t exist.
“So, the British looked to the United States, which at that time was not
yet in the war. Now the United States did not have a terrific record for merchant
shipbuilding on the eve of World War II. In fact, in the previous
decade only two ocean-going cargo ships had been built in the United
States. However, England was so desperate that it was willing to turn to a
country that had little experience and no expertise in building the types of
ships needed. The hope was that <strong>with</strong> the British design and <strong>with</strong> British
help, it might take about a year to build each ship. Since the United States
was not yet in the war, it was just possible that the Americans could put
enough manpower on the project to produce the ships in numbers which
would make the project viable. Anyway, there was no alternative, as
German submarines were sinking merchant ships every day.”
<strong>Drucker</strong> continued his story: “Since few Americans knew anything about
building merchant cargo ships, the British cast a wide net and didn’t limit
themselves to shipbuilders or those <strong>with</strong> a lot of experience in the industry.
One of the individuals that the British contacted was industrialist Henry
Kaiser. Kaiser knew little about shipbuilding and was completely ignorant
about cargo ships. However, he looked at the British design and proceeded
not <strong>with</strong> British help and expertise, but out of his own ignorance.
“The British used expert workers who had not only general, but in-depth
shipbuilding knowledge. Since he didn’t have such workers, Kaiser asked
himself how he could proceed <strong>with</strong>out such expert workers. He came up
<strong>with</strong> a unique solution based on his ignorance of shipbuilding. Kaiser redesigned
the assembly process using pre-fabricated parts so that no worker