Emil Stache and Al Muehlausen on Behalf of the Us V. Teledyne Relays

Emil Stache and Al Muehlhausen on behalf of the United States of America

v.

Teledyne Relays

by

Sylvester Connors

An Applied Research Paper

School of Business and Entrepreneurship

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Master of Business

Nova Southeastern University

2008

Introduction

In the business world, there are various types of controversy. Controversial issues within the business sector can greatly impact the effectiveness and success of any business structure. It is essential for anyone who works in the area of business or key stakeholders of various business ventures to be aware of such issues.

An important issue of concern in the business field is those individuals known as whistle blowers. Whistleblowers are the person, the employee, who attempts to make known the wrongdoing. Whistle blowing is defined as an attempt by a member of an organization to disclose what he or she believes to be wrongdoing in or by the organization (Cavico & Mujtaba, 2005). The writer of this research paper will discuss the implications associated with whistle blowers.

An in-depth look at whistle blowers will focus on the analysis of law, ethics, and social responsibilities as it related to the case associated with Teledyne Relays of California.

Teledyne Relays Background Information

Emil Stache, a Vietnam Veteran, was a manager of quality engineering and reliability at Teledyne Relays. His duty was to test relays that were made for the government. Emil took his job seriously because during the Vietnam War, he was injured while on patrol with members from his platoon. A member of his platoon stepped on a trip wire that was connected to an unexploded howitzer shell.

The Vietcong soldiers would routinely go into the jungle and recover unexploded ammunition and set them up as booby traps for the American soldiers, causing catastrophic damage to the soldiers and their equipment. The howitzer shell that blew Emil Stache and his comrades up that day was the result of a faulty relay switch that didn’t detonated when it was dropped.

After returning from the war and surviving his injuries, Emil Stache began working at Teledyne Relays. Emil had an extensive background in laboratory testing from his work with General Tire. His career at Teledyne began as the supervisor in the Qualified Products List Laboratory. Emil had tested almost everything from space shuttle parts to nuclear warheads. When Emil started out at Teledyne, his job was to test samples of Teledyne’s relays for government specs and report the result to Defense Electronic Supply Center (DESC) in Dayton, Ohio. Teledyne was part of a very large conglomerate. There were over sixty other components of the manufacturing giant. Quality control was not taken very seriously. Teledyne was in the business of making relays and getting them out to the government. In the beginning, Emil notice there was a big shakeup at the company due to drug abuse. The shakeup helped Emil climb the later into his position. As Emil began testing the relays, he noticed that the tests were failing immensely. When he noticed the failures, he immediately went to his supervisor and other top management to report his findings. They blew him off and told him to go back to work. Emil went back to work and continued to notice the failure and was documenting every failure. Being the new kid on the block, Emil didn’t want to ruffle any feather, but he also knew that what was happening was wrong. The relays were the cash cow for the company and if Teledyne had to pull the relays from the Quality Product List, this would mean a significant lost in revenues.

Emil recommended some changes to his supervisor and top management. First change involved replacing all relays in the testing circuits. Second change was to rebuild the lab and change to a solid state nonmechanical component lab. With these changes, the testing of the relays continued to fail at meeting government specs. Emil knew that this information should be reported to inspector at DESC, but he was not allowed to talk to the inspector unless one of the design engineers was present. Emil now had a tough dilemma. Teledyne was producing faulty relays and he had no one to report the findings to. Emil then turned to his friend, Al Muehlhausen, an old friend that works at Teledyne Relays in Hawthorne. Emil explained to Al was he notice during his inspection of the relays. Al knew what was happening, but there was nothing he could do either. At one point, Emil was ordered to lose paperwork and samples of the relays that were defective. Emil did the opposite; he took them home with him. As Emil began asking questions, he was promoted out of the lab. He kept in contact with the new people to see if the relays were continuing to fail. They informed him of the same results even after all the changes that he suggested. Emil still was noticing all the returned relays and he mentioned it to his new supervisor, but his new supervisor told Emil to not “rock the boat.” He encouraged Emil to remain focus on the task at hand and not to worry about something that didn’t concern him. Emil thought back to his days in Vietnam wondering if only those defective parts had not ended up in the government inventory, then maybe some of his friends would still be alive and he wouldn’t be in the situation he is in. Nobody cared, and subsequently continued producing faulty products and the government keep buying them at ridiculous prices. Emil knew now that he needed to be careful and watch his back. He had asked some tough questions and nobody wanted to answer them.

Emil now was in the High Reliability Lines Division and a major problem came up in the aerospace industry with a high failure rate associated with the soldering not making a good connection in the electronic product. Emil was sent away for two weeks for training in this area and was now the subject matter expert. He knew that with is knowledge, he would not be able to be blown off