Corporations: An Appetite for the Future

(6 of 10)

Thornton set some sort of record by remaining a second lieutenant for only 48 hours. After a series of whirlwind weekly promotions, he became one of the youngest full colonels in the Army Air Forces. With the war now on, Thornton got to work with a determination that the Pentagon still remembers. He not only established training programs for 1,700 different kinds of specialists, but also devised the first system of "statistical control" the armed forces had ever seen. Thornton calls that "a fancy name for finding out what the hell we had by way of resources and when and where it was going to be required."

At one point, Colonel Thornton had 2,800 officers all over the world under his command. Among them were nine who became particularly expert at Thornton's new concept of statistical control. After V-J day, he talked them into offering themselves as a team—with him as the captain—to apply the knowledge they had acquired to the business world. This was the beginning of the famous Whiz Kids, who then ranged in age from 26 to 34.

Dream Project. Hearing that Ford Motor Co. was struggling with the task of resurrecting itself into a modern corporation, Thornton fired off a cocky telegram to Henry Ford II, offering to use the ten's ability to bring the sprawling, money-losing company under control. Ford checked with Lovett, invited Thornton to Detroit. There Thornton negotiated salaries ranging from $8,000 a year for the least experienced of the group up to $16,000 for himself. It was quite a deal for Ford; in one package, it got two future presidents and four divisional bosses.

Ford was a dream project for the hot-shot young Air Forces team, bent on applying its service-learned management-control methods to industry. The ten began a department-by-department survey of the company, asked so many questions that they were dubbed the "Quiz Kids" by resentful Ford oldtimers. When they swung into action, the name was derisively changed to Whiz Kids. They switched Ford's capital, long left fallow, into interest-bearing accounts that promptly began earning Ford $4,500,000 a year, analyzed everything from assembly lines to suppliers' carburetors to learn how to trim costs, and set up the modern management techniques that are still used at Ford today.

Thornton liked being the top man, and he chafed at being held back by Executive Vice President Ernest R.

Breech, who had come to Ford from G.M. after the Whiz Kids arrived. In 1948, after two busy years with Ford, Thornton quit to take a job with eccentric Industrialist Howard Hughes, who made him vice president and general manager of Hughes Aircraft. Thornton convinced Hughes that not enough companies were working full time on developing the advanced weapons technology the nation was sure to need. He re organized Hughes Aircraft, building its sales from $1,500,000 to $200 million in five years, and prepared it to be practically the first company to get into missile work. But Hughes's cost-conscious advisers balked at spending the extra money needed to keep up the pace. Thornton decided to quit to form his own company.