the phantasmic Gerresheim experience... justification for the extremely rigid quality control methods already noted. In this context they tell a story at Gerresheim of an alarming complaint once received from Surabaya in Southern Indonesia. Breakages, it was reported, were extremely high. A Heine ken director who was in the area decided to investigate. He found that a swing crane in the harbour was dropping consignments of empty Heineken bottles on to the quay from a height of 80 feet. Even for crated bottles this treatment might have been expected to result in splintered destruction. But these were simply wrapped in jute! Yet more than 50 per cent of them were undamaged. The complaint was withdrawn. Another story, almost certainly apocryphal, which CONTACT heard at Gerresheim, concerned a short-sighted man who wanted to know the work potential of one of the company's robot forklift trucks in a single shift. His curiosity was understandable; one of the especially fascinating recollections of Gerresheim is the sight of what is locally called 'the ghost train' - a team of unmanned forklift trucks moving purpose fully about the shop floor, like unearthly characters in a TV space serial, collecting trays of bottles stacked in pallets at the production line terminal and taking them to conveyors bound for the despatch bay. "Excuse me, my man," said the short sighted visitor - and he was, remember, very short-sighted - "excuse me, but would you mind telling me-". "Sorry sir," saidthetruck, "Ican'tstop!' And it trundled on. 10

Jaarverslagen en Personeelsbladen Heineken

Heineken Contact | 1980 | | pagina 10