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Forty-three military prime contractors: Net value of their military prime contract awards, July 1, 1957, to June 30, 1958, and defense sales as percent of total company sales, 19581

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1 Number of companies, of the 100 largest military prime contractors, for which these data are published. Majority of business is defense but percentage not stated.

3"Special products for armed services."

Sales of rockets, propellants and associated items (Aerojet General Corp.)
Computed.

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Company operates shipbuilding plant at Bath, Maine, primarily for construction of combatant ships for U.S. Navy. Also does miscellaneous work in fields other than shipbuilding.

Source:

"100 Companies and Affiliates Listed According to Net Value of Military Prime Contract Awards, July 1, 1957, to June 30, 1958." Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Standard & Poor's "Corporation Descriptions." Standard & Poor's Corp., New York.

THE BRIDGEPORT HARDWARE MANUFACTURING CORP.,
Bridgeport, Conn., January 19, 1960.

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE, Capitol Building, Washington, D.C. (Attention Mr. Ray Ward).

GENTLEMEN: In connection with the study which you are making on procurement, we understand that mechanics hand service tools, which we manufacture, are being considered.

In this connection, we feel that it will be helpful to you to know that we have had considerable experience in dealing with the GSA procurement organization with our products. This goes over a period of some time, more than a year and a half, and we are impressed with the ability and cooperation which we have received and which we think is beneficial to the taxpayers.

We believe the knowledge and experience of this buying organization, in connection with our products, and their desire for good quality tools, is certainly in the interest of the services who use them, and results in overall savings to the Government.

We are, also, particularly impressed with the caliber of the inspection organization with whom we have had contact and we have found them capable in all respects.

We therefore hope that consideration will be given to maintaining the established organization in GSA for procurement of hand service tools. Thanking you for your attention and cooperation.

Very truly yours,

JOHN F. WINDSOR, President.

SNAP-ON TOOLS CORP.,

Kenosha, Wis., January 14, 1960.

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE,

Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.

(Attention Mr. Ray Ward).

GENTLEMEN: We have heard that the Joint Economic Committee has recently taken some interest in the procurement of hand service tools for the Government and military agencies. Tools are of vital importance in the maintenance and repair of all machinery, equipment, and mobile units. This critical necessity was established during World War II. It also emphasized the importance of quality in hand tools.

During the past 2 years, there has been an effort to establish single-agency procurement, particularly for the military agencies. In theory, it would be most economical for the Government to buy through a single buying office, but there has been much confusion due to interservice complications unless the agency is more or less neutral.

Based on our own experience as a manufacturer dealing with all agencies, we firmly believe the best interests of the Government would be served by procurement of hand tools through the General Services Administration (GSA). Procedures have been established in GSA which eliminate much of the redtape and confusion normally encountered. GSA is a professional buying agency with facilities for testing and evaluating specifications for the end use of the product. This is important in the case of hand tools where a screwdriver that is used occasionally in post office maintenance would not be economic for an aircraft mechanic making constant use of the screw driver on costly equipment, hardened screws, and under hazardous working conditions.

On the same item, with identical quantities, we have been able to quote lower prices to GSA than to other agencies. The reason is that procedures of delivery, inspection, billing, and payment are made definite and businesslike.

We trust that the Joint Economic Committee may give some consideration to this problem in connection with procurement of hand tools.

Yours very truly,

R. PALMER, Vice President.

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 15, 1960. Subject: Proposed single manager assignment to Quartermaster Corps of hand

tools.

Mr. RAY WARD,

Joint Committee, U.S. Capitol,

Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. WARD: It is understood that your committee has an interest in the subject assignment and in view of that fact I am taking the liberty to convey some comments and opinions concerning possible adverse developments which could result from that assignment.

Having been the Government representative of manufacturers of hand tools for the past 10 years I have followed closely the many intricacies involved in the supply area of hand tools and especially the many thousands of transactions involving the purchase of such tools for the various military and civil supply systems. Closely allied with the procurement functions and of course equally important are the engineering phases of preparing specifications and standards, as well as inspection. All of these are of vital importance to achieve a suitable degree of quality control thus assuring the Government of obtaining the best possible value for our tax dollars.

During these 10 years there has been a constant and coordinated effort on the part of both Government and industry to strive for the improvement in quality of the millions of dollars worth of hand tools required annually for the maintenance of our military equipment and facilities as well as equipment and facilities required by our civil agencies. Within this period, considerable progress has been made toward this objective and much of the credit can be attributed to the fact that the necessary organizations for achieving this goal; namely, engineering, purchasing and inspection have been slowly built up by the training of individuals who through these years of experience have been educated to realize the importance of supplying our Armed Forces and other users, with good quality tools. This is contrast to the poor quality and often useless tools which had infiltrated the supply systems in previous years when virtually no quality control was exercised.

Over the years it has been possible to observe the operations of these various functions and the resultant setbacks and confusion which invariably developed when major policy changes and reorganizations were injected into the picture. Severe setbacks in the overall effort to secure good quality tools invariably occurred with changes in procurement procedures. Unquestionably the subcommittee is well aware of the very deplorable results of the Air Force decision in 1954 to delegate responsibility for the purchase of hand tools to each individual activity, necessitating of course that the responsibility for carrying out this program be dumped into the hands of inexperienced personnel. This ill-advised decision resulted in loading the Air Force supply system with a reported 75 percent of inferior low grade hand tools. The Army, too, has on numerous occasions purchased tools by persons who obviously were inexperienced in a knowledge of the hand tool industry and accordingly, quite innocently, succeeded in injecting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of low grade hand tools into their supply system.

Another outstanding example of the confusion and inefficiency which invariably occurs when major changes are made in a Federal supply class assignment of responsibility was the AF transfer of class 5130 (portable electric tools) from Robins AFB in 1957.

Since procurement and technical responsibility were removed from the hands of experienced personnel at Robins AFB and delegated to Topeka AFD and thence to Brookley AFB where it has been functioning for over 18 months, I have yet to see a clean, clear-cut bid issued by the AF for the 5130 class of tools. This situation appears to be directly attributable to the processing of details by inexperienced persons, and is rather a typical development which logically and inevitably occurs under such circumstances. Conditions such as these obviously bring about a tremendous waste of time and money to industry as well as the Government and further seems to be a lack of proper utilization of manpower which has been trained at considerable cost to the Government, and of course to the taxpayer.

As a direct result of the intolerable conditions which developed when the Air Force placed their handtool procurement program into the hands of inexperienced persons, the situation became so acute by the early part of 1957 it was evident that immediate and drastic steps must be taken to halt the further flow of inferior tools into their supply system. Accordingly, the AF entered into an agreement with General Services Administration to utilize the resources of that department for the provisioning of a substantial portion of their handtools, provided that only good quality tools would be supplied.

Through the diligent and efficient efforts of GSA who already had a substantial nucleus of personnel at hand, trained in handtool buying, this program began operating in November 1957 and in spite of the magnitude of the assignment, was able to supply the AF handtool requirements with surprisingly few complications. This relationship between AF and GSA has apparently been quite satisfactory to all concerned which is evidenced by the fact that currently GSA is supplying the major portion of AF handtool requirements.

In the writer's opinion, based on years of close association with Government procedures and policies in the handtool field, General Services Administration has been successful in obtaining better value per dollar spent for handtools under the current program than any other Government activity. This has certainly been to the advantage of the Government, the reputable handtool manufacturers, and certainly the taxpayer. Discussions with numerous cognizant persons in the Air Force has indicated that it is unanimously agreed that the tools being supplied by GSA are completely satisfactory to all concerned and that the widespread dissatisfaction over inferior tools obtained under previous purchase methods has been completely eliminated.

With the aforesaid in mind it was quite surprising to learn that a recommendation has been made to appoint the Quartermaster Corps as single manager for handtools. From my observation, next to Air Force, Quartermaster Corps appears to be the least qualified of all to assume this tremendous responsibility, unless redelegation of authority for accomplishing two of the most vital functions of overall single managership is contemplated. Specifically, these functions are

1. The preparation of specifications and standards currently under the cognizance of Bureau of Ships.

2. Procurement responsibility, now delegated to GSA, Navy (recently transferred from NPO, Washington, to GSSO, Philadelphia) and to a lesser extent to various Army activities.

Referring to No. 1 above, that vitally important function of preparing and coordinating specifications and standards has been the responsibility of Bureau of Ships for quite a few years. Consequently a very capable and efficient organization of experienced personnel currently exists to carry out the assignments of that office.

The second important function and the most important of all is that of procurement currently being accomplished by various agencies as previously defined, resulting of course in considerable duplication of efforts. Over the past 10 years this operation has been kicked about rather indiscriminately, the results of which are quite evident upon examining the history of this era of handtool procurement. It is very evident that GSA is the only agency having an existing well coordinated organization of trained and qualified personnel to efficiently assume the burden of any plan for centralized procurement of handtools.

In view of the foregoing it is very disturbing to think that the existing efficient organization composed of high-caliber personnel with many years of training in this highly complex handtool field, now in operation by Bureau of Ships for developing and coordinating specifications and standards and by General Services Administration for the procurement and inspection of handtools, may be left to "die on the vine." Both of these have been built up over a period of years at considerable expense to the Government and it would take a minimum of 5 years and additional expenditures of substantial sums of money to develop comparable efficient organizations.

Conversely, the Quartermaster Corps does not appear to have even a few persons in their department properly qualified in the handtool field to form even a nucleus of counterpart operations adequate to assume the functions currently administered so capably and efficiently by Navy and General Services Administration.

It would therefore seem highly desirable from the standpoint of efficiency, practicability, and economy for Quartermaster Corps to consider retaining the administrative functions of single manager of handtools, which they are unquestionably well qualified to handle, but to redelegate responsibility for preparing specifications and standards to the Bureau of Ships and for procurement to General Services Administration. In all probability this procedure would result in an efficient and orderly transition into the single manager plan of operation and thus preclude the utter chaos which would surely result in the event that QM attempts to take over the entire range of functions under the authority vested in a single manager.

The opportunity of presenting these comments and suggestion for your consideration is greatly appreciated. Respectfully submitted.

R. MAXWELL TINSLEY.

List of surplus canvas duck, webbing, and tape from military supply depots— Cotton duck summary sheet

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