Assembly Line

Margaret E. Pickering Tufo, 68, of Fairless Hills, Bucks County, a retired assembly-line worker and delivery person for The Inquirer, died Wednesday at Frankford Hospital's Bucks County Campus in Fairless Hills after a long illness. For many years, she was an assembler for Keystone Pen Co. in Tullytown, Bucks County. She also had been a Bucks County route delivery person for The Inquirer during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Born in Philadelphia and educated in local parochial schools, Mrs. Tufo traveled across much of the United States as a Navy wife.

As a youngster, Ben Hamper had full warning of what it was going to be like in the world of work. His father, "a five-star drunk with the ambition of an eggplant," had a job installing windshields at a General Motors plant in Flint, Mich. "Car, windshield. Car, windshield. No wonder my father preferred playin' hopscotch with barmaids," he writes. Hamper may have been forewarned, but - coming from a long line of "shoprats" - he was seemingly unable to escape his fate. By the time he was a young man, his "life was so screwed up . . . that the idea of working for GM not only lost its repugnance, it took on the frantic allure of a rope tossed to a quicksand victim.

Like so many other manufacturers, the quarterback factory has relocated in the Sun Belt. Brigham Young University, that stronghold in the Utah mountains, used to be the steadiest producer of premier passing quarterbacks. But now, the University of Miami, with headquarters in the upscale suburbia of South Florida, is the most productive supplier of arms. The latest to churn off Miami's assembly line is Vinny Testaverde. Almost any status-seeking NFL owner would be proud to have one. Testaverde, a 6-5, 215-pound senior, already has thrown for 724 yards and six touchdowns in the Hurricanes' first three games this season.

Chrysler Corp. said yesterday it would spend $137 million to modify its Newark, Del., assembly plant to produce an additional car, the hot, new Dodge Intrepid midsize sedan. The announcement allayed fears that the plant would close in 1994, when production will stop on the Chrysler, Plymouth and Dodge compacts assembled there. Production of the Intrepid is to start at the Newark plant next fall, Chrysler spokesman Lee Sechler said. The renovations making that possible will include a 50,000-square-foot addition and modifications to the existing assembly line to permit production of the Intrepid and the cars being built on it now. Those models are the Dodge Spirit and Plymouth Spirit sedans, as well as the Chrysler LeBaron sedan, coupe and convertible.

Just around the corner from Pureland Industrial Park, which boasts more than 100 companies and provides a base for employment in this town, one more industry briefly set up shop yesterday. There, in the technical education classroom of Logan Township Elementary School, a roomful of first graders reported to Cupcake Delight headquarters early yesterday morning, decked out in handmade paper chef's hats and ready to work. Yesterday's lesson, part of a pilot program designed to introduce technology into the elementary school curriculum, focused on the assembly line.

Once a month, the kitchen at Beth Sholom Congregation hums like a smooth-running factory. Cauldrons full of boiling pasta bubble softly, styrofoam trays are lined up neatly on the countertop, and men and women - wearing crisp white aprons and latex gloves - expertly maneuver around one another. At several Montgomery and Bucks County synagogues, the transformation from kitchen to assembly line is a regular occurrence. As part of a regional program called "Cook for A Friend," community organizations take turns preparing meals for the David G. Neuman Senior Center in Philadelphia.

Think of an auto manufacturer who, in the interest of efficiency, decrees that a fixed amount of time be devoted to each unit: so much time for the chassis, so much for the sheet metal, so much for the engine. At the end of the process, the cars would be sorted and priced to reflect how well the workers at each station had done their jobs. The company might have to dump a lot of unmarketable automobiles, but the assembly line would keep rolling along. Sounds like a pretty stupid way to run an assembly line, doesn't it?

The metallic green Beretta had started down the line at the Chevrolet assembly plant in Wilmington, apparently destined to be a coupe. That is, after all, what the compact Beretta has always been. But someone at the plant decided that since this Beretta had only one life to live, it might as well live it as a sexy, blow-in-your-ear convertible. So the assembly-line robot did not weld a steel roof on this particular Beretta. Instead, the partially completed coupe was loaded on a truck and shipped across the river to a sprawling industrial building in the flat, agrarian hinterland of Bridgeport, Gloucester County.

It was a crime so disturbing that the aircraft electrician who discovered it on a combat helicopter-assembly line at the Boeing Co. plant in Ridley Township last week almost threw up. A bundle of about 75 electrical wires controlling the instruments on a Boeing Chinook CH-47F - "the life and breath of the aircraft," in one union leader's words - had been slashed. Half the wires in the three-inch-thick cluster had been severed. Someone, it seemed, had hacked away at a $30 million aircraft that has been a workhorse for the military since the Vietnam War and a lifeline to the local labor force that produces it for the world's armed forces.

Dressed in a cap, raincoat, white shirt and tie, Henry Ford watched with pride as the children piled into his quadricycle. Giggling, they rode around waving to friends and enjoying the sites at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. "We built the car on an assembly line right here," said Ford - better known as third-grade teacher Jack Briggs - as he gestured around the gym at the Friends Central lower school. "Everyone had a job to do. " Sounding like a proud inventor, David Bernstein, who was dressed like Ford, said he helped paint the quadricycle and worked on its steering.

EVAN MALONE had it good. His grandfather, Daniel Malone, an engineer for RCA/GE and later a maker of military systems and parts, had a workshop in his home "with all kinds of deadly stuff I tinkered with as a child. That's where I first caught the engineering bug. " Today, Evan Malone is doing unto others with NextFab Studio, a marvel of a shared workspace and prototyping station loaded with high-tech machinery, insights and enthusiasm. Now celebrating its second anniversary in a ground-floor space at the University City Science Center, NextFab has proven so popular it's about to expand into a second location on the west side of Washington Avenue "five times as big," shared Malone last week.

In the Region Vist withdraws Treasury application Vist Financial Corp., a Wyomissing bank with branches in the Philadelphia area, said it withdrew its request to participate in the U.S. Treasury Department's Small Business Lending Fund after being told the application would not be approved. In its regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Vist said the Treasury Department did not give a specific reason for the rejection. - Harold Brubaker Montco casino access plan debated Officials of the $100 million-plus Valley Forge Casino planned for Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, appeared before the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board on Wednesday to present a plan to monitor access to the new casino.

W HEN I'M KING of the world . . . The Phillies will give Pedro Feliz a little more respect than being tossed onto the market like a Cash-for-Clunkers auto . . . OK, I get it. General manager Ruben Amaro is probably making a shrewd business move by hoping there won't be a lot of clubs lining up to offer a big number - or even a low-medium number - to a 34-year-old player who just happened to play third base for a back-to-back National League...

The Boeing Co. yesterday was forced to indefinitely suspend manufacturing on two lines of military aircraft at its Delaware County plant after the discovery earlier in the week of a plastic cap in the fuel line of a V-22 Osprey in production. "It is a very serious matter when you can't deliver on the commitments you have made to your customers," said Boeing spokesman John G. Williamson. "We take this very seriously. " The shutdown of work on the Osprey, a tilt-rotor craft, and on the CH-47 Chinook, a medium-lift cargo helicopter, at the Ridley Park facility was ordered in conjunction with a Corrective Action Request (CAR)

A federal judge yesterday ordered a $19-an-hour Boeing Co. assembly-line worker to undergo psychiatric testing after authorities arrested him and accused him of vandalizing a $30 million Chinook helicopter being built for the Army. Matthew Kevin Montgomery's appearance in U.S. District Court yesterday came as federal authorities announced that they had arrested the Trevose man and accused him of slashing wires on a nearly completed combat helicopter this month. The discovery of damage to two Chinooks shut down production last week on Boeing's Ridley Township line and prompted the U.S. Defense Department to launch a criminal probe into what caused irregularities during the final phase of production of the dual-rotor helicopters.

It was a crime so disturbing that the aircraft electrician who discovered it on a combat helicopter-assembly line at the Boeing Co. plant in Ridley Township last week almost threw up. A bundle of about 75 electrical wires controlling the instruments on a Boeing Chinook CH-47F - "the life and breath of the aircraft," in one union leader's words - had been slashed. Half the wires in the three-inch-thick cluster had been severed. Someone, it seemed, had hacked away at a $30 million aircraft that has been a workhorse for the military since the Vietnam War and a lifeline to the local labor force that produces it for the world's armed forces.

Boeing Co. abruptly shut down production of Chinook helicopters at its Ridley Township plant yesterday and summoned a U.S. Army investigative team after the company detected "possible manufacturing irregularities" in two of the combat helicopters, which cost up to $30 million apiece. More than 100 Boeing workers were dismissed at midday, and hundreds of others on the evening shift reported to work only to assist with inspections. All assembly work was halted. The problems were detected in a new Chinook model - CH-47F - that has not yet been deployed to combat zones.

AgustaWestland, the global helicopter-maker, celebrated the opening of its new assembly line in Philadelphia yesterday with talk that its 20-year-old plant will keep expanding. Meanwhile, business and political leaders hailed the opening and the region's rapidly growing helicopter industry as a major boost to Philadelphia's global image. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Mayor Nutter and Reps. Allyson Y. Schwartz, Patrick Murphy and Joe Sestak, all area Democrats, spoke at the ceremony in a hangar where new helicopters will undergo preflight testing.

PBT Transcript (2-19-2008) OPENING TITLE Camden's own Campbell's Soup is more than doubling its line of low sodium soups. The new offerings include 36 varieties called Select Harvest. Campbell's will also start selling 12 soups just for kids with a new healthy label under federal criteria. The secret is sea salt, but the real reason for these changes is that its healthy for their bottom line. Sales of those products have gone from $100 million in 2003 to $650 million last year.

Gerry Shreiber President and CEO of J&J Snack Foods Corp., headquartered in Pennsauken. The company is the purveyors of SuperPretzels, Icees and Tio Pepe's churros, among other niche snacks. The rags to riches backstory: Shreiber grew up in Atlantic City, the son of a greengrocer. When his girlfriend got pregnant, he married her and found work to make ends meet. "I was a father at 18. It was 1960. Times were different. I dropped out of school and got a job as a machine-shop apprentice.