Tom Eagar's steel company experience (Bethlehem Steel)

Tom recalls Bethlehem as a "dinosaur company" still doing ingot casting in the mid-70s with 63% yield. Mike Kimchuk (DMSE alum, BS VP-adjacent role, MIT Educational Council chair for eastern PA) was charged solely with improving yield by 1% — worth ~30% of profit. And the 1930s Eugene Grace bonus story: highest-paid US executives, bonus paid on tons *poured* not sold, during the Depression.

I worked for a dinosaur company. At Bethlehem Steel, when you do ingot casting, you get about two-thirds yield. If I have an ingot — we make ingots tapered, the mold looks like this, we pour the metal in, and when it solidifies it shrinks and we get a pipe. You have to cut off that top part and send it back to remelt. This is the only good part. Why do you make it tapered?