HBH Vanishing Act

So much to write about.

The most productive job shop in the country has vanished.

Joe went to the mysterious job shop HBH Enterprise again to see if we could get some footage of all the activity, and it was deserted. Nobody was there. The place looked like it had been packed up and cleared out in a hurry. There were no machines, no stock, no supplies, and no people.

Why did they shut down so quickly? I know it wasn't the economy; they were working two shifts. Why did they move all their machines? They must have set the operation up at a new site.

We have one clue: a packing slip that was left behind. It reads "BETA SITE CLOSED. Redirect to Taipei, Taiwan."

Coffee Confidential

Joe, my cameraman, wants to meet. He won't say why, only that he'd discovered something big about HBH. He was afraid to talk on the phone. We are going to meet at our usual place, the coffee shop. What's going on now?

I am becoming paranoid. Sometimes it feels like I am being followed. Sometimes I hear strange clicking noises on my phone. Every old car with a yellow bumper sticker seems sinister.

Connect the Dots?

Somehow these things are connected:

• “Seeing is believing”
• My informant, who calls himself Dark Cover
• RELIC, the entrenched CNC company out to stop all of us from learning the truth
• Incredible boosts in productivity we are hearing about in job shops across the globe
• HBH Enterprise, one of those job shops, located in Asheville, North Carolina
• “Crack the G-code”

What am I missing? How does this all tie together?

Curiouser and Curiouser

This story is getting stranger by the day.

Last night I received a surprise visit from an unexpected source. He did not specifically ask to remain anonymous, but I won’t reveal his identity yet until I can speak with him. Clearly he is tied in with Dark Cover, my mysterious informant.

I can’t write too much about our encounter except to say we didn’t talk much, but he gave me something that throws this case into a new light. If you follow the link, you’ll see what I mean.

Somebody is hiding a big secret and somebody ELSE wants me to find out what it is, and tell the world. My new informant said only that “Seeing is believing.” I’ve heard that expression before…

It also seems that RELIC is tied in with all of this, and wants to stop our investigation. Dark Cover has given us a very specific warning, which is really confusing. Why would RELIC, a huge company, care about our story? Are they hiding something?

And what is it that is causing job shops to increase their productivity to crazy high levels?

So many questions.

Failures to Communicate

I’ve been trying to get back into HBH Enterprise. Security around the job shop is tighter than ever. I’ve also been researching the connection between traditional g-code intensive CNC and productivity losses experienced by job shops. If shop owners only knew the truth about this, they would seriously question machine tool builders as to why they don’t offer more advanced CNC options. Somehow, the industry has lost track of the fact that machine performance and production capacity are directly related to control performance and capacity.

HBH Cracked the G-code

We need to break this story open. I came to this way of thinking when I read some of RELIC’s marketing faxes. They kept talking about g-code intensive CNC being a good thing. When I heard this, all at once I understood what Dark Cover meant about cracking the g-code. Job shops should be light years ahead of g-code intensive CNC by now. Somehow, HBH is a job shop that has cracked the g-code and RELIC will now do anything to stop the word from getting out.

Marketing Malarkey

Had thought we had our editor’s ok to investigate the HBH job shop. But after we told him our suspicions, he ordered us to hold off: for reasons of objective journalism, the CNC EyeTeam needed to give RELIC a chance to explain their g-code intensive CNC. Only now, after waiting weeks, it has become apparent that RELIC has no explanation. They just keep faxing marketing messages to us saying everything is just fine. "All is well." "Good enough is good enough." "The past is the future." Something's going on here and we need to find out what.