Troubleshooter

Scarcely three months ago, the worst bottleneck in the defense production program was machine tools. But by last week, machine-tool makers had gotten, in rapid succession, super-priorities on metals and tools, the authority to reach far & wide for labor, and a 12% price boost. As a result, they were well launched on a 400% production expansion.

The man who broke the bottleneck was Clay Bedford, 48, a production-engineering expert on loan from Kaiser-Frazer Corp. Charlie Wilson brought him to Washington last May (at no salary) as his production troubleshooter, because he knew that Clay Bedford was the production brain behind just about every one of Kaiser's most spectacular projects.

Ever since Bedford went to work for Henry Kaiser, right out of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he has been tackling tough jobs. At 26, he was put in charge of a $20 million job on Cuba's Central Highway. Bedford then straw-bossed the building of Bonneville Dam, a project made so hazardous by the swift Columbia River that no bonding company would have anything to do with it. After doing the same job at Grand Coulee Dam, in 1940, he was made boss of Kaiser's four West Coast shipyards, even though he had never seen a ship launched.

As head of the shipyards Clay Bedford hit on the idea of building ships in prefabricated sections. At war's end, Bedford went to Willow Run as Kaiser-Frazer's production chief, soon became known as a brilliant "swap guy," chasing all over the U.S. for scarce materials to keep K-F's production lines rolling. When Wilson tapped him for the Office of Defense Mobilization, Bedford had just spent his first night in a new home in Oakland, Calif., where he was to manage K-F's West Coast defense production.

Last week Charlie Wilson swore Bedford in as head of the Production Executive Committee, gave him power to ride herd on the whole defense program. A few hours later, Bedford took off on a tour of West Coast aircraft and ordnance plants, hunting new bottlenecks to unclog.

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