ASCO was recently awarded the biggest contract ever in the company’s history. Caterpillar has picked us to make a series of 4 valves that will go on every one of their diesel engines starting next January 1st. The government has tightened the diesel emission regulations and our valves will take the sooty exhaust and send it through some sort of afterburner to clean it up. The folks from Caterpillar have been in the plant for most of the week going over how and where we will build their product.
On Thursday they gave us this huge flag/banner about 9′ x 15′ in size with the Caterpillar logo on it. Early Friday morning it was given to a couple of the maintenance guys to hang from the ceiling at the end of the hall leading into the assembly area. A couple of minutes after they had finished hanging it I walked by on my way into the cafeteria. There were a couple of other people looking up at it, so I did too and this is what we saw:
I walked into the back and asked the maintenance supervisor about the TAC flag. He said, “You mean CAT?” I replied, “I thought that was what it was, but the flag was hanging backside out and upside down, so it looked like TAC. Maybe we should get it hanging right before the Caterpillar representatives come in, see it and decide maybe we weren’t really capable of assembling their valves correctly.”