No wonder US companies are going under

[MiloMorai]

I have heard it said that it takes a new grad engineer 5 years before he becomes a productive employee.

New bean counters should start to work at the lowest level and work their way up through the company before they start doing any bean counting.

[Russian]

From my personal experience, military (USAF) uses around 500,000$ dollars in men power and parts to renovate a building…….a building which got demolished a year later. No heads rolled, it was just a ‘natural’ occurrence. And then they whine about low budget.  

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Midnight
OK, another Big company that is in financial trouble gets some new college educated super geek that decides they need to do the new 6-Sigma (whatever) business practice. In order to do it, they THROW AWAY all kinds of stuff. Some examples...

Do you live in a totalitarian country?! If ANY "manager", "boss" or any other idiot comes to inspect our "server room" that is in fact a storage facility for ages-old PC hardware, and asks me to whoopee throw something away - I'll probably kick him out (didn't he see a "do not enter without permission!" sign at the door?) and immediately call an Institute's security officer (i mean an officer caring about classified information). I need all that XT spare parts, and it's not their business. If their 1983 $2,000,000 spectrograph will break down because of 20+ years old MFM HDD - they'll be responsible, not me. But the problem is that they don't care, while I do.

I especially love "firemen" coming to check if we smoke at our workplace. They come every year and write complains to director. I know Official Russian Language much better then they do, they usually have nothing more then a church-school, Party academy, and a military service as a tail-gunner brhind them (best of them, most of them served at construction-corps and can hardly tell what side of the showel to get hold of). So we usually win fallometric contests, because we speak the same language with our Scientific Director, a Nobel Prize nominee.

Our "Chief Engineer" of the whole Institute told me 3 years ago that he "doesn't know about any stinking kontuper network"... Got into an elevator with him and my colleague. Good facial massage. We didn't break any mirrors with his head, and it was a real achievement. No more questions asked.

Originally posted by Midnight

Last example. A company has a whole factory floor full of usable machinery and processing equipment. Some of it brand new and never even installed. They need to clear the space for consolidation and offered the items for sale. My company offered to buy a large portion of the items.

Some laywer got wind of the pending sale and stopped the whole thing because of fear of liability on the used equipment. We informed them we would sign wivers, etc. for all items, however the laywer refused. Now all of the equipment is going to be cut up to prevent it from being used, and then hauled off as scrap.

Now rather than making some money back for all the equipment, the copany is going to have to pay to have the stuff destroyed and hauled away.

Here we have a word of mouth worth enough for such things. No lawers, please.

From what I have read in books - isn't a "hand-shake" a promise enough for a deal in America? If it isn't - then I am happy to live in an "asian barbarian" country.

About scrapping working equipment: according to "lend-lease" agreement USSR had to retun all the machinery that was intact after the War. Americans needed everything that came with Studebecker trucks, including a driver's leather jacket and a Tommy-gun under the seat to count it as "intact", so USSR didn't have to pay triple price (compared to UK) for it. What Americans did right at ports, was to put completely repaired and working trucks with all spair parts and tires and stuff under press, make compact cubes out of it and only then load them onto their ships...

A really good way to make friends

Originally posted by Midnight
Have American companies become so wrapped up in what college educated clowns tell them that they are so willing to toss away oppurtunity to make money? No wonder they are going out of business all over the place.

We have the same problem here. People who have MBA or other business degree come to power here. At least in "commercial" enterprises.

They are like supidest bastards from Soviet era who rule scientific institutes.

How Russian science is going to survive when our IT department doesn't get any money for 2 years now?... We have to do everything out of our trash-containers that we fill by upgrading someones PCs for money, because our salary is enough only for subway and tobacco, no food or rent. And the institute makes huge repair-works replacing floor-tiles, water-pipes and other stuff in a building that was finished in 1985 and doesn't need any repair?... And where all this aluminium cieling and doors go? I know that 1kg of duraluminium costs $2-3 when you bring it to a recycling point. They stripped the building of 3 tons of duraluminium in last 3 weeks, where did it go? Damn, ask me - and you'll never need any money to spend on IT hardware for at least 1.5 years...

[Rolex]

Originally posted by MiloMorai
I have heard it said that it takes a new grad engineer 5 years before he becomes a productive employee.

New bean counters should start to work at the lowest level and work their way up through the company before they start doing any bean counting.

Hi Milo,

I've worked for, and with, a wide variety of companies over 25 years and found most engineers are productive within a year. Of course it depends on many things; country culture, management, product sophistication, their role in design for manufacturing or other long-term design, and naturally, the individual. Five years is a long and expensive investment for no productivity.

Accountant(s) running a company is bad, in my experience. An accountant is quite capable of running a company though. When I made the transition from engineering and engineering managemet to factory and general management (and ultimately company ownership), I was lucky to have a accounting mentor who answered all my questions of where our P&L numbers came from.

But, management is not just understanding 'where' and 'how' the numbers are arrived at; it's knowing how to change them. Good accountants are important, but engineering is an excellent stepping stone to good corporate management since engineering is ultimately the application of logic to problem solving.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

LOL. Accountants, gotta love them.

Yeah, JIT is great, saves the company thousands. Then when a raw material order gets held up for 3 days, the company pays $40K (yes, the customer requires a penalty in the amount of $40,000 an HOUR for every hour you stop his line) an HOUR for three shifts while the customer's production line is down because of a lack of parts. Worked out GREAT! I laughed at management for the whole 3 days. Just think, another ten years and JIT will save the company almost half what they paid in penalties. That ain't the only time a lack of materials cost them a missed deadline either.

Engineers. There's another group of real winners. Like the bunch who decided to punch (in a CNC punch press), form (in a press brake), and weld a piece of aluminum 0.250 thick, 3 feet long, 8" tall, and 4" wide. It had to hold a 1MM tolerance on every dimension. They decided to punch the holes and the flat shape, then form the offest, then form the two sides of the channel, and then weld two pieces cut out on the punch into the sides of the offest. They just couldn't understand why they couldn't hold a 1MM (0.040") tolerance.

One week they got in a big hurry to "fix the process". They had me punch the parts (tolerance on my CNC punch was 0.006"), carry them to QC (Mitutoyo CMM tests for dimensional tolerance), have them checked, and take them to the brake area. The brake operator formed them in three steps (his brake holds about 0.008 to 0.010 per step) and took them back to QC (checked again on the CMM), and then took them to weld. The parts were setup in a press jig fixture, and welded with a TIG welder at about 200 AMPS. The welder then takes them BACK to QC for a CMM check.

I was making the second run when I saw three engineers outside the QC lab across from my CNC punch (I was close to QC because I was a PPD tech) trying to cool the parts with compressed air! They just could not grasp the concept that they were distorting the parts by cooling them unevenly.  

They wasted THREE days of time for three PPD techs before I got really mad and took them and their boss and the QC super and SHOWED them that what they were doing was distorting the parts.

It was great. I loved it. It turned out there were three of us who could make parts that would pass QC. The only problem was that it cost the company 3X what they sold the part for. They still make the part, and lose money on every one of them. Only now it is in regular channels and they have a 30% scrap rate. But the accountants said it would cost too much to have an outside supplier investment cast the part and then have them machined in the 5 axis Miori Seki. And the engineers said it could be formed and welded cheap.

Out of the whole engineering department, we had one GOOD engineer, they let him go, he wanted a raise after 2 years without one. We had two that were okay, you could hold their hand and lead them through the process and show them how to make it work. The other five couldn't find their bellybutton with both hands and a road map. The smartest guy in the department doesn't have an engineering degree. He gets more done than the rest put together. His jobs always work, and always make money. He makes less than most of the high end production floor people. I made more than he did and I was only a PPD tech.

JIT was just ONE example where accounting screwed the pooch. I could go on all night.

Problem one with 98% of all engineers and accountants: All college degree and no real world practical experience. Absolutely ZERO common sense. Oh they can SEE numbers, and they can CRUNCH numbers, but reality is just a little beyond their grasp.

I quit. 4 years ago this month. I make less money. I work more hours. I'm much happier.


Here's ANOTHER reason businesses here are dying. Bridgestone/Firestone just agreed to a contract that pays production floor personnel in a tire plant $72,000 a year in total compensation, not counting overtime. That's the lowest paid production worker in the plant, 40 hours a week, $72,000 a year. That's 30% higher than the local plants that make cars and trucks. And what's really funny, the employees complain. One came in my shop and said "man, they really expect you to WORK!". At $35 an HOUR (counting insurance and retirement), paid breaks and lunch. I know one that made $80,000 last year AFTER taxes, in take home pay, NOT counting insurance and retirement. He's only average. Out of about ten customers I have who work there, he's about 5th in pay. They come in my shop (with no A/C) and ask "how can you stand it in here?".  

I have two friends who either are or were engineers. They're the only two I've seen worth what they're paid.

[Dowding]

Problem one with 98% of all engineers and accountants: All college degree and no real world practical experience. Absolutely ZERO common sense. Oh they can SEE numbers, and they can CRUNCH numbers, but reality is just a little beyond their grasp.

What makes you think Accountants don't work there way up? It's what I'm doing - I did 4 years at university and am now studying for the next three years while working as a management accountant in during that time. I won't be qualified until those three years are up and certainly won't be able to take on senior management roles before that time.

JIT is not always applicable to every business - trying to make it work without robust supplier relations or within an unsuitable environment is a failure of management not JIT.

Wow.. where did you get all that over explanitory verbage from? You said a whole lot of suff, yet said nothing of the wasted time and materials I talked about in my examples.

They were bad business decisions pure and simple - nothing to do with some intrinsic weakness with accountancy. That was my point.

[Rolex]

That's a pretty broad brush your're using Captain. Your anecdotal experience from a single firm shouldn't be enough for you to make such a sweeping generalization. It comes across as petty griping.

Winners are able to have their ideas listened to because of their attitude, respect from others and maturity. They have the social skills to catch the ear of management - be it factory floor management or other management.

If you were in a management position, you may have had the opportunity to correct and improve things, but you weren't. And why you were not in a management position seems very clear from your post.

Those who preservere to get engineering and accounting degrees understand that perserverance is one of the great lessons of higher education. Those who don't have a degree and denigrate those who do, or worse, try to influence young people that 'college boys' are worthless, do no service to anyone.

Skilled labor with years of practical experience are vital to any manufacturer of an engineered product and should be treated with the respect they've earned. They get my attention. Whiners without any better ideas who don't have the maturity to present them are a liability and poison to an organization.

[Dowding]

Skilled labor with years of practical experience are vital to any manufacturer of an engineered product and should be treated with the respect they've earned. They get my attention. Whiners without any better ideas who don't have the maturity to present them are a liability and poison to an organization.

100% correct. My father fits into your first category. We both work for the same company and both contribute different, but essential skills.

[takeda]

I don't see this as an Accounting problem, it's just another Quality Control/Proccess Engineering scam.

I had not heard about this one before, but the software developing industry is awhash with them. Basically, well dressed snake oil peddlers sell improved quality by the bottle, aided by shiny PowerPoint presentations, unreadable white papers and funky statistics.

It always boils down to a bunch of stupid rules, increased paperwork and retarded practices that piss everyone from middle management downwards, and are ignored as much as possible, and faked in order to get some idiotic certification.

So the problem lies mostly in upper management, which doesn't think that motivated workers and knowing your bussiness is the true and simple way. They must buy into the last new age fad and push it blindly.

This is quite sad, because people grow suspicious of any kind of sound quality assurance or proccess improvement measures, burned by all the nonsense pushed by these scammer clowns.

So, in hindsight, you just hide well the second wrench, do your work, let the executives be happy with their new shiny toys, the scammers run with the cash in the trunk of their BMWs and everybody is happy.

[Xargos]

You must learn to work around the rules and if you get caught, blame it on someone else then get amnesia.

It's the only way you can be a State employee.

[MiloMorai]

Dowding, spending all that time learning to count beans means nothing if you don't understand the other side of the fence.


Rolex, I heard that many years ago so the time may have dropped in the mean time. From experience when I was at BNR(Nortel), who like to hire new grads, there was only 1 of the 6 in my department who was any good after 1 year but he had a couple of years as a co-op student before being hired. Of the 3 jnr managers (hardware, software, firmware) only one was any good, my boss, the hardware manager because he had 'bench time'.

I also think it depends on the field they specalize in. Some are more practical experience knowledge intensive than others.

The best engineers are technoligists for they require knowledge in design and the practical.

[Dowding]

Dowding, spending all that time learning to count beans means nothing if you don't understand the other side of the fence.

You are again making ill-founded assumptions. Firstly, I didn't do accountancy at degree level, just Applied Physics and secondly I worked as a production analyst on the shop floor for 18 months prior to moving into finance. I know our products, our machines and our people.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by Rolex
That's a pretty broad brush your're using Captain. Your anecdotal experience from a single firm shouldn't be enough for you to make such a sweeping generalization. It comes across as petty griping.

 

Wrong answer hotshot. You ASSUME entirely too much.


I gave EXAMPLES from one firm. Should I now take a half hour and post examples from EIGHT firms to suit you? How about the opinions of a half dozen engineers from some very big name companies? One of whom has 35 YEARS as an engineer and holds about 15 patents. Another of whom has over 15 years as an engineer and has a dozen awards for engineering.

I don't REALLY care how it comes across. After 25+ years dealing with engineers and accountants in several different situations from construction through small and large scale manufacturing, I'll comment based on my real world experience with them.

Perservering to get a degree is not nearly so impressive as actually LEARNING, and the two are NOT necessarily the same. Until the DEGREE requires serious real world experience, that yields practical knowledge, it'll take a lot more than a degree to impress me.

[TheDudeDVant]

The people/businesses from the original post in this thread deserved to die if the stories told are indeed true..  Nothing more absent in those examples than just a good dose of common sense...

Thanks for the reading Rolex.. Its enjoyable to read your feather handed writting that impacts like a sack of bricks.. lol

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Originally posted by Rolex


If you were in a management position, you may have had the opportunity to correct and improve things, but you weren't. And why you were not in a management position seems very clear from your post.

 

Again, you ASSUME from one post that you have a clear idea about something you know NOTHING about. You THINK you know what went on because you read a post on a BBS. Wrong AGAIN.

I was a troubleshooter. I DID solve problems FOR management. I did correct and improve things, it was my job as a PPD technician. I had an 84% acceptance rate on my ECR's (Engineering Change Requests). By FAR the highest of anyone in the plant. I was the fastest rising PPD tech in plant history. And I went from regular production employee to PPD tech in a company record 6 months. Because I knew how to get the job done, the problems solved, and the parts to floor production. I spoke engineering with the engineers, programming with the programmers, and management with the office people.

Why wasn't I in management? Because I was polite, but honest. I did not then and do not not "suck up". Besides, I came from the wrong two departments. People from the welding shop and the CNC punch shop didn't get promoted. I LIKED it on the floor, I left because PPD got semi merged with regular production, and the supervisor kept it screwed up. And because welders and CNC punch operators never went any higher. I knew some with 20-30 years who never went further. And yes, they were good enough to be supervisors, they made the supervisors look good.

Don't assume you know me or what I did just because you read what I typed in a very short period of time. What you see here is not what they saw when I dealt with management or engineering. This is not a professional work place environment, it is an Internet BBS, the section known as the "O'Club". Big difference.

By the way, if you do not like the "tone" of my response to you, perhaps you should take a close look at the "tone" of your response to me.