32 in '44

While Portsmouth Navy Yard had gained experience and accumulated lessons learned with sectional construction and the use of wooden machinery mock-ups prior to the war, the willingness to learn new lessons from day-to-day experiences in new situations at the start of the war proved to be the hallmark of the yard’s success. Although the yard workers had never built a submarine below sea level before, a shortage of building ways quickly helped them to recognize building submarines in the new dry dock #1 and the new building basin as the key to increasing production.

Adapting to circumstances and less-than-optimum conditions for production goals became strengths of shipyard management. The prime example of this was the “push ’em off the ways” philosophy that compensated for the shortage of building ways. Another example was management’s refusal to let late or unreliable contractor-supplied components affect production schedules by pretesting and rebuilding suspect components as necessary prior to shipboard installation. Schedules and contingency plans were adjusted on a day-to-day basis to compensate for shortages through a locally developed Portsmouth Scheduling System. Yet another example of adaptation was the refusal to let inadequate communication and work control systems affect production. That production challenge was overcome through open communications and informal work procedures that minimized the need for paperwork. Finally, the low industrial priority routinely assigned to submarines was overcome by the bulk ordering of material and components for entire classes of submarines. The yard’s innovative scheduling system readily accommodated this practice.

Having crafted submarines one at a time with experienced and skilled workers before the war, the yard shifted to the mass production of submarines with inexperienced workers by equipping them with specialized skills and empowering them to work independently in small teams, doing the same job at repetitive worksites. It is to the credit of a competent cadre of naval leaders and experienced civilian managers that they had the vision to free the workforce of undue paperwork, record keeping, cost accounting, and other restrictions so that production was king. There were no mixed signals or distractions throughout the yard. All hands were focused on, and committed to, supporting waterfront operations to maximize submarine production.

After an initial reluctance to bring aboard large numbers of women workers or to assign them to the more responsible and demanding jobs, shipyard management eventually hired women in large numbers that approached, by the latter stages of the war, 20 percent of the workforce. Women were gradually hired for positions of increased responsibility, including the skilled trades. When the Selective Service Administration threatened orderly production by randomly siphoning off many of the younger and often more talented employees from critical trades, shipyard management negotiated a first-of-its-kind three-state deal that provided for accurate recruitment forecasts and allowed the yard to plan for the loss of employees and the timely training of replacements. An important lesson to be learned from Portsmouth’s mobilization experience is that management’s ability to rapidly adjust to changing conditions and needs is critical to successful mobilization.

It is also true that Portsmouth Navy Yard’s operations during the war provided a window on several important management concepts. As noted earlier, the significant benefits realized from worker empowerment, specialized small teams, and the employment of women during the war all waned after the war before making a strong comeback a quarter century later. The advantages of decentralized management in the shipbuilding industry also took a step backward immediately after the war in both the Navy Department and the U.S. Maritime Commission. While decentralized management has resurfaced as an important industrial concept, Lane’s caution about lessons learned “depending on the situation to which they are to be applied” rings especially true for the shipbuilding industry and, most notably, modern submarine construction. The decision-making independence given World War II shipyards to build Liberty ships and fleet submarines is far less applicable to current shipbuilding, especially the construction of nuclear-powered submarines. These technological marvels demand quality and safety controls that are best centrally managed and uniformly applied across all construction sites. This study does, however, suggest that selective application of decentralized management in any industry, including shipbuilding, has the potential to pay huge dividends.

One unqualified truth can be taken from the Portsmouth Navy Yard mobilization experience: Remarkable production success can be achieved when bold and enlightened management leads dedicated and motivated employees and both are zealously committed to a common objective. This is especially true when that objective is winning a war. The wartime environment may very well have been the lubricant that enabled all the shipyard’s organizational pieces to fit together and run so efficiently. However, the environment would have mattered little had the shipyard employees and management not been up to the task at hand. Fortunately, as this study shows, all three factors meshed as never before to produce submarines at unprecedented production rates, including 32 in ’44.