Rick L.

Notes from Rick Less and things I remember about working with Chuck Breuer at Rockwell Collins:

1.      It s good that we only remember the good stuff or we would probably not survive, and…

2.      It’s good that there is plenty of good stuff, so, some of the details I remember…..

3.      When Chuck was an AE responsible for Connectors (a waaay long time ago).  I was a new guy and I specifically recall how amazing it was, seeing all the people that wanted some of Chuck’s time and expertise.  There was always a line at his desk (this was before email) and he still managed to get everything done.

4.      I left Cedar Rapids and worked in a Rockwell Collins manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City for almost 10 years.  Shortly after it was announced that the Salt Lake facility would be closing, an old friend shows up, Chuck Breuer who was assigned the task of planning the move of Receiving Inspection from Salt Lake back to Coralville.  It was like a restart to a prior connection and made the upcoming transition tolerable.  Those of us in Salt Lake had invested a lot in our facility and it was difficult to see it come to an end.  Because I knew Chuck and his background, it did make the whole process something we could look back on with some knowledge it would all be in good hands.

5.      As it turned out for me, I had ended up having the good fortune of working closely with Chuck for many years to come, both in Receiving Inspection and later in Supply Chain Quality.  We survived many things that at the time seemed overwhelming.

a.       A strike – most memorable was taking the Collins truck to go pick up Incoming Receipts each day at the UPS parking lot and driving back to the Coralville facility thru the picket line gauntlet.

b.      A Y2K transition (Year 2000, if you don’t remember the acronym)

c.       Chuck became pretty experienced at moving Receiving Inspections;  I know that he had a lot to do with moving the process from Mason City to Coralville.  I mentioned the move from Salt Lake City to Coralville.  A reunion of Government and Commercial Avionics included moving the process from Cedar Rapids and combine it with what was already going on in Coralville.  Chuck moved all of them.  It should be of note that since he retired, there has not been a single mention of moving any Receiving Inspections!

d.      Converting from MAN-MAN to PIOS

e.       Converting from PIOS to SAP

f.       Ghazi !!

6.      Chuck had the best example of good attitude for doing things:

a.       Stop analyzing and just do it – I try to follow that example to this day

b.      Have some fun along the way – I am pretty sure it was Chuck that would use someone else’s phone to call and leave a voice message that consisted of a good strong “burb!”

More than a couple years have gone by without us getting together for a game of golf or a beer.  Hope we can change that and do both in 2013.