HN 2: The British and their Works

The absence of special tools led to hold-ups in manufacturing.
That part of the toolmaking division which had been evacuated
to France was lost in the wake of zoning, and at the start of 1946
the toolmaking factories were waiting for manufacturing
permission. The factory management therefore called upon
Richard Berryman to intervene with the Military Government.
Colonel Radclyffe was given a list of companies which could be
considered as possible suppliers for the Volkswagenwerk. But
this intervention did not meet with any great success. The resulting
hiatus was filled in only a makeshift fashion through
in-house production at the Vorwerk. There were insufficient raw
materials available to produce tools in adequate quantities. This
resulted in shortages, above all in the case of cutting tools.
Forming tools and form cutters were not available as standard
tools; the companies declined to manufacture them. The waiting
time for a "broach", for example, was eight months.
Quite apart from the procurement problems, the tool store was
in a catastrophic condition. There was no information concerning
tool requirements, because the relevant card-index had
fallen to the flames. The tools used by the workers, some of
which simply lay around in the factory, were not inventoried,
which only fostered losses. A lack of supervision and planning
also contributed to the fact that the distance between the
Vorwerk and the main factory sometimes inhibited the production
flow, because damaged tools could not always be replaced
from the stores. This chronic state of affairs was the subject of
a meeting at the beginning of September 1946. The situation
had by now become so bad that most tools could now only be
obtained via barter deals or connections. General manager
Münch ordered the relevant employees to carry out a stock take,
indicating which tools could be procured by the purchasing
department and which could be manufactured by the
Volkswagen plant itself. 56
Under these circumstances, the monthly production of 4,000
cars originally planned by the British looks like a pipe dream.
It was based on the maximum capacity of machines and conveyor
lines, and in addition the achievement of this figure presupposed
ideal conditions: uninterrupted supply of materials
and purchased vehicle components, a sufficient number of
skilled and unskilled operatives, and normal rations. The Volkswagenwerk
was a long way from meeting such conditions. The
ultimately revised target scheduled a monthly production of
1,000 Volkswagens for the British military government – and
even this programme could not be consistently filled.
24 25
THE IMPROVED UPSWING