Wow, after some searching, and some head scratching.......a great light dawned on me. I am almost ashamed to reveal my particular problem......
We had been using a MAXNC to do work, and apparently it doesn't care about feed rates in the code. At some point one of the guys programming started using G0 instead of G1. with the MAXNC we have this doesn't seem to make a difference, but it does in this program.
So I have appropriately slapped myself, and others.
I can't believe I overlooked that.......dumb