Seah
SFO is essentially an industrial manufacturing operation, although unique in important
aspects such as the major stress on research and development. Private industry was asked
to help make an objective appraisal. An Industry Advisory Panel was formed early in 1952
including: O. E. Hunt, retired executive vice president of General Motors; Frank Newbury,
retired vice president of Westinghouse; and Theodore C. Gerber, Manager of Wabash Ordnance plant for Olin Industries. The Panel was given SFOO's thoughts:
LASL has been divested of production operations, and this has proved
beneficial. A nuclear production organization, with Rocky Flats as the agency,
is being activated. The philosophy developed and now being activated is sound.
The basic frameworkis capable and flexible.

The reorganized setup for field tests is largely adequate with satisfactory
division of staff, technical, and other functions,
Transfer of technical and production functions for inert components to

Sandia was a major step in promoting LASL efficiency, but we now face at Sandia
much the same problem. Sandia is carrying too big a responsibility and workload

in the general field of production.

Today's operations are proceeding adequately,

but this load raises serious questions of adaptability and flexibility for handling
known future assignments,

We are unable to answer the question: "Are we on the right track in production of high explosive and related components, and of inert components?"
We feel we are not. Proceeding from the LASL-Rocky Flats solution we incline
toward concentration of inert component production in a single agency.
The study determined that the structure for development and production of non-nuclear
weapons had one characteristic: A high fence dividing organizations working on HE systems
from organizations working on inert fuzing, firing, delivery, and storage systems. It was

found, for instance, that man-month expenditures by LASL personnel at Inyokern, Burlington,

and Pantex working on production problems in getting two HE systems into production were

very high and much of this valuable time should have been devoted to new development,
There was similar diversion of development effort from Sandia to help Kansas City and the
HE plants get started on processing two weapons' components.

The Panel concluded in August 1952, that:
SFO is on the right track at Los Alamos and in the nuclear-and-initiator
production setup.

Sandia Laboratory will benefit equally by concentration on technical functions
following divestment of production functions.
Another contractor agency is indicated to manage and operate the non-

nuclear implosion weapon production system, including fabrication and assembly,

with use of available management and facilities if possible. The agency should
preferably have production—but not staff nor technical—control over all nonnuclear production,

ALSO

Management of Sandia Laboratory and of the Kansas City Plant prepared separate
studies.

DOEAL

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