Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Midnight on July 20, 2005, 03:15:44 PM
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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...
1. If the tool box had more than one of a particular size wrench (i.e. two 9/16" combo wrenches) then one had to be thrown away in the trash. No employee could take it, it had to go in the trash.
2. If the spare parts inventory had more than one of the same item (i.e. two flange-seal gaskets) then all but one had to be thrown in the trash.
After a while, a valve needed to be replaced on a piece of equipment. To do the job, two 9/16" wrenches are needed to remove the nuts and bolts. Hmm.. can't do the job, only one 9/16" wrench. After finally removing the nuts and bolts and getting the new valve, the repair could not be completed because there was only one flange-seal gasket available and the job required two.
Now a simple repair job that normally took less than an hour to complete took almost 3 days because a new gasket had to be ordered with express delivery. Don't know the total cost of that repair, but with the admin cost (PO and associated paperwork), lost production time, wasted man-hours of operators that would have used the down equipment, etc. I am sure it was a lot higher and less efficient than it would have been to have two wrenches and a couple gaskets in stock.
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A company (company 1) that makes large carbon-carbon parts had several large waste containers of scrap (from broken parts, machining errors, etc.) A second company (company 2) could have used the large scrap pieces to make many smaller machined pieces.
Company 1 decided to get rid of the scrap. Company 2 was aware of this and offered to remove the scrap and PAY Company 1 for it as a bulk price for goods recieved. Company 1 said it would be too much paperwork hassle to do the transaction so had the scrap removed by a industrial waste removal company. The waste company charged 5-figures $$$$$ for the service.
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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.
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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.
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Darwin works in the business world too.
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Source?
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Looks like that. Any company that is run by accountants will die or at least wither away. If the business leadership doesn't have a clue about the scope of activity and run by numbers, things go bad real quick.
US isn't the only place where the beforementioned insanity is taking place. To the accountant it looks nice because he's maximising the profitability of capital i.e. the smaller stock you keep the more profit per dollar you seem to get via numbers.
So they kill the warehouses without understanding what it will do to the business.
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Originally posted by Sandman
Source?
LOL..was gonna say, who are these companies?
shamus
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Similar to that, I'd see money waste practices in US military that sounds so ridicules it is beyond belief. That’s what happens when someone lost pride in self work (or too much pride, have to leave something behind, Chiefs are excellent example of useless projects) and were brought up by ‘individualism’ instead of ‘teamwork’ such as in Japan education.
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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.
yeah, them damn colleges and universities are ruining our country.
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Looks like that. Any company that is run by accountants will die or at least wither away.
Rubbish and particularly ignorant of reality. I'm an accountant in a large multinational manufacturing company and without accountants to apply controls to expenditure and aid strategic decision making whilst maintaining goal congruence most companies will stagnate.
The best general manager I've worked with was an accountant. His attention to detail and resultant understanding of finance meant nothing ever slipped past him. The division went from a 2 million a year loss maker to turning in a 3 million profit within 2 years.
The examples in this thread are ridiculous - in a lean manufacturing environment, every ounce of capital has to give huge returns.
the accountant it looks nice because he's maximising the profitability of capital i.e. the smaller stock you keep the more profit per dollar you seem to get via numbers.
So they kill the warehouses without understanding what it will do to the business.
Not true. In a JIT (Just in Time) environment you can reduce the non-value adding activities (like excessive stock holding). There's no point in holding large amounts of raw materials when that capital could be doing something else.
If absorption costing is used to value stocks then you'll actualy find managers over producing at the end of a particular period to boost profits.
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I've seen this.
I worked for a company in Dallas that flat out refused to by used anything. Everything new that was purchased was done so by a third party ordering source that handled all their shipping and recieving. The source allways used expensive fed ex overnight even if we didn't need to the parts right away.
in the military for whatever reason there has been a shift from having actual spare parts on hand. When I worked RADAR we liked having spare cards on hand for hot swaping and trouble shooting. The OIC heard about this and made us throw all of them away. About 30K worth of working cards.
Last year we were changing some glass out and we need 5 washers. These weren't uncommn but we didn't have them on hand as we turned half of our operating stock back into supply.
It took 3 shifts for the order to get filled and us to get our washers and when we did get them they were mismarked and the wrong size.
We could have had the job done flat out in one shift but instead it took 4 days.
I can see exactly what the above mentioned scenerio/example is talking about.
I know a guy that is the ISM for a construction company. Their storage wharehouse was full and he needed room for about 20 P4 computers that he just got done changing out. Instead of selling them on ebay or somthing they just said "throw them away" He did....right into his garage.
The company didn't want to take on the "debt" of renting another storage unit $59.99/mo so they took a loss instead. Some how the accountants justify this:confused:
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Originally posted by Sandman
Source?
Source is first hand experience.. unfortunately
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Originally posted by Dowding
Rubbish and particularly ignorant of reality. I'm an accountant in a large multinational manufacturing company and without accountants to apply controls to expenditure and aid strategic decision making whilst maintaining goal congruence most companies will stagnate.
The best general manager I've worked with was an accountant. His attention to detail and resultant understanding of finance meant nothing ever slipped past him. The division went from a 2 million a year loss maker to turning in a 3 million profit within 2 years.
The examples in this thread are ridiculous - in a lean manufacturing environment, every ounce of capital has to give huge returns.
Not true. In a JIT (Just in Time) environment you can reduce the non-value adding activities (like excessive stock holding). There's no point in holding large amounts of raw materials when that capital could be doing something else.
If absorption costing is used to value stocks then you'll actualy find managers over producing at the end of a particular period to boost profits.
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.
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This is exactly what my company did. They call it '5S' or 'lean manufacturing'. Since I work in a repair department, we threw away tons of spare parts, they 'congratulated' us, and within a couple of weeks we needed some of the parts we threw away. In fact, this constantly happens.
This happened last week:
Me:'Where's that old camera we had?'
My boss: 'Oh, we threw it away, it just sat on the rack...order another one.'
Me: 'Okay, but it costs $1500, and they want to install it for another $750, plus travel charges.'
My boss: 'Welllll......'
Me: 'So, tell me again, how does 5S save us money?'
My boss: 'well the shop looks better.'
Pretty much a big joke to make the managers & executives 'look' good.....
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yeah, them damn colleges and universities are ruining our country.
Nothing wrong with colleges.
However, I do believe the problem is sending handsomehunkes to them in the first place.
Nothing more dangerous then a retard with a college education. Sooner or Later however, these graduates of Law school will get what's coming to them.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Nothing wrong with colleges.
However, I do believe the problem is sending handsomehunkes to them in the first place.
Nothing more dangerous then a retard with a college education. Sooner or Later however, these graduates of Law school will get what's coming to them.
:rofl
kinda like transistors and computers. Crap in Crap out. ;)
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xerox has been trying to implement lean 6-sigma, with horrendous results
let's just say average wait time for a down copier went from under 4 hours to almost 2 days.
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I have heard it said that it takes a new grad engineer 5 years before he becomes a productive employee.
New bean counters should start to work at the lowest level and work their way up through the company before they start doing any bean counting.
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From my personal experience, military (USAF) uses around 500,000$ 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. :rolleyes:
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.;)
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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I'm a QA professional and you are all correct.
JIT, TQM, Kan Ban, 5S, 6 Sigma, Baldridge... the list goes on and on..... and none of it is a majic solution. I have seen them work, and I have seen them fail. It all depends on the situation, the support from the top, and the resolve of the workforce.
I would place our current product next to any competitor on the market today. Not because I'm such a great Quality Guru... but because we got a new President who insists upon it. Suddenly arguments over "good enough" went away. Decisions to ship and bank instead of hold and repair stopped cold.
The examples stated here of idiotic JIT decisions and silly 5S garbage runs are just that.... silly and idiotic. Anyone who would allow perfectly good parts to be thrown away is criminally stupid, and has no clue how 5S should be accomplished.
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I bet the 20 something accountant in the story never cut up a wrench and welded it all back up in a way to fit a certain part that you couldn't easily get to any other way.
midnights example is really strange tho because everyone knows that a fastener/bolt with a a 9/16 head, if it has a nut on the other side, has a 9/16 nut that you have to hold with another wrench.
lazs
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Originally posted by midnight Target
I'm a QA professional and you are all correct.
JIT, TQM, Kan Ban, 5S, 6 Sigma, Baldridge... the list goes on and on..... and none of it is a majic solution. I have seen them work, and I have seen them fail. It all depends on the situation, the support from the top, and the resolve of the workforce.
I would place our current product next to any competitor on the market today. Not because I'm such a great Quality Guru... but because we got a new President who insists upon it. Suddenly arguments over "good enough" went away. Decisions to ship and bank instead of hold and repair stopped cold.
The examples stated here of idiotic JIT decisions and silly 5S garbage runs are just that.... silly and idiotic. Anyone who would allow perfectly good parts to be thrown away is criminally stupid, and has no clue how 5S should be accomplished.
The problem is not that the ideas don't work. The problem is exactly what you describe. The quest for the "magic bullet" that solves all the problems.
They want to put the system in place and expect results. But without understanding and accepting the principles BEHIND the system.
ISO/QS is a perfect example. I went to 40 hours of classes on ISO/QS for a company. They were going to get certified because a customer requested it. The thing was, they DESPERATELY needed to embrace the principles BEHIND the ISO/QS system, in order to solve the problems they had. They were looking for a piece of paper to hang on the wall to impress a customer. And they don't understand WHY they can't get ISO/QS certified. It's a matter of adopting the PRINCIPLES that are the FOUNDATION of ISO/QS.
The guy who picked me to be on the ISO/QS team was the QA manager. The same guy promoted a woman from operator to qc inspector. She'd been written up 7 TIMES for failing to properly execute a "first piece last piece" inspection report because she was too lazy to walk 100 feet to get a template required for inspection. So they gave her three departments to cover to inspect parts.
QS/ISO, six sigma, and other programs are great, but only if you grasp the principles behind them, and use common sense to actually apply the principles, instead of "putting on a show".
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Originally posted by lazs2
I bet the 20 something accountant in the story never cut up a wrench and welded it all back up in a way to fit a certain part that you couldn't easily get to any other way.
midnights example is really strange tho because everyone knows that a fastener/bolt with a a 9/16 head, if it has a nut on the other side, has a 9/16 nut that you have to hold with another wrench.
lazs
That's not a strange example at all. It is a common example. All TOO common. It all goes back to expecting a "system" (be it six sigma or ISO/QS) to work without grasping the principles behind it or putting it in place with common sense. They dod not understand the system, they only know it is supposed to solve their problems. So they put it in place and make it absolutely rigid and inflexible, because they don't understand it well enough to actually apply it in the real world. Then the laws of unintended consequences take over. Worse still, they can't REALLY make the system work, so they blame the system, or they blame somoeone else.
Sure, everyone in the REAL world knows that most 1/4" fasteners use a 7/16" bolt head and a 7/16" nut. And 5/16" fasteners use 1/2' bolt heads and nuts. And 3/8" fasteners use 9/16" bolt heads and nuts. But when viewed from the office after reading books on the system, two 9/16 wrenches seem to represent unnecessary duplication. Again, this is where the system is put in place without understanding it and using common sense.
The newer versions of ISO/QS TRY to take into account that people who try to put the system in place don't understand it, by actually providing for common sense adaptation and giving examples. Unfortunately, it often doesn't help.
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My division introduced 'Lean Manufacturing' a couple of years ago with much fanfare and even an award or two to the parties involved. Pity it didn't work, my plant is closing down and I just finished my last full shift.
The idea is good, excellent even. Toyota came up with the idea and it did well for them but it didn't work for us despite warnings from the production people. The problem with all good ideas like this is not that they don't work but that their execution often falls into the hands of people who are either barely competent or simply lack the experience to implement it. Meanwhile the people who know it's not working are either ignored or accused of being obstructive.
Throughputs did improve, from my experience mainly because the layout of the equipment improved. But the biggest problem was that changes would only work when everyone was fully cross trained and when everyone turned up for work that day. On top of that far too many operators were short term contractors partially trained. Who quite frankly could care less. Most of the full time staff were disaffected as well. Mainly because we were sick of being preached to by people who were demonstrably barely competent and by managers who were more worried about covered their rear end than actually doing their job.
I completely agree with Virgil's last post because it fits my experience.
Examples: We had an oven for curing product. It wasn't in use 100% of the time but was vital. Someone decided it could be dispensed with. It was removed from the books in some accountancy process but not from the floor. But we couldn't touch it. It sat there in perfect condition. Meanwhile the orders were missed and product built up waiting. We thought it was hilarious.
Similarly other machines and equipment were taken off the books in the same accountancy exercise. It was obvious to everyone in production that we would need them again soon. We were ignored. Eventually senior management actually acknowledged we were right. More lost orders.
We needed a kind of tape. Normally when stores would order more from the manufacturer when stock reached a certain level. This was stopped by some genius in accounts who didn't realise that the manufacturer had a lead time of at least a month. Partly because we were using a type of machine which was obsolete. Even more lost orders as the machine sat idle for a whole month. More hilarity on our part.
All these ideas are good, Lean, sixsigma etc. They do work but you need competent people to execute them and you need to listen to the people who actually do the work.
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Condolences on losing your job. Good luck finding a new one. Hope you move up, instead of just on.
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Bad management decisions, cpxxx. Pure and simple.
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The point is that every company needs a good accountant. But a company does not need an accountant to run the company - the management must have 100% understanding of the scope of activity and the requirements of field work in order to succeed.
The management can and will be supported by accountants, but the managers need to merge the accounting and field work together to provide a mix which will result in a successful company.
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That's why I'm training to be a Management Accountant. ;)
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Virgil, your first post is so full of jargo it makes it almost unreadable.
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Originally posted by cpxxx
My division introduced 'Lean Manufacturing' a couple of years ago with much fanfare and even an award or two to the parties involved. Pity it didn't work, my plant is closing down and I just finished my last full shift.
Best of luck to you CPxxx. I am sure you will bounce back quickly.
My company will be losing 14,500 fine employees in the very near future. I made it past the first round (15,000) now I get to play wait and see for the next round.
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Originally posted by Midnight
Source is first hand experience.. unfortunately
Methinks your company doesn't understand Six Sigma.
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The fact remains that generalizing that all university graduates, managers, engineers and accountants are losers (or even that American companies are failing - the topic title) is undefendable hyperbole.
American companies are doing well in spite of the statistically stable number that have failed and will fail from incompetence or mismanagement. Productivity is pretty darn good.
Captain, it's a shame that you were surrounded by idiot engineers and accountants at eight companies over 25 years. That's just an amazing string of bad luck.
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1. If the tool box had more than one of a particular size wrench (i.e. two 9/16" combo wrenches) then one had to be thrown away in the trash. No employee could take it, it had to go in the trash.
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
My thoughts exactly. This doesn't sound like any American company I've ever experienced. The typical technicians response to an idiodic edict like having to throw stuff out that he knows he'll need is to simply ignore it. If someone comes checking, lie and/or hide evidence.
That's the American way! It's what differentiated the US soldier in WWII from the germans.
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These funky business words and practices sound a lot like communism. When it fails it is inevitably because "it wasn't done right"...not because the system just sucks.
J_A_B
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Some things companies do seems crazy but only if you don't know what's behind.
Then again sometimes if you KNOW whats behind they seem even more crazier :D
btw "lean manufacturing" is a must in here at least; companies pay taxes from their current assets and inventories (they are property just like anything else and under taxation) and these taxes can be quite hard.
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This is so like mine thing im an operator at owens corning veil in the netherlands.
I got all papers and and skills and experience on the line im an allround operator.
But the managment dont care about that coz there have been alot of operators coming after me with less papers and experience but they get paid more and higher scaled.
They also have 6 sigma wich is a talk group with no results.
I stay myself asober dutchman .
And the usa circus get more grip every day on the company everybody works on their own island all wanna score and lick themselfes to the top.
There is no sense of working in one company.
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Salaried Engineer: "I need a 24 Volt Center tap transformer and I found this. The voltage is right but what lead is the centertap?
Lowly Hourly Tech: Uhhh...the one in the center Dave."
True Story.
He had the book learnin'
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Originally posted by Rolex
The fact remains that generalizing that all university graduates, managers, engineers and accountants are losers (or even that American companies are failing - the topic title) is undefendable hyperbole.
American companies are doing well in spite of the statistically stable number that have failed and will fail from incompetence or mismanagement. Productivity is pretty darn good.
Captain, it's a shame that you were surrounded by idiot engineers and accountants at eight companies over 25 years. That's just an amazing string of bad luck.
I didn't say ALL. I did say a large percentage. Is U.S. based manufacturing in serious trouble? You're damned right it is. Anyone who believes otherwise is fooling himself.
As for me and eight companies, that is not ALL my experience, which makes the arguement even MORE pointed. Part of that is my partner, and my best friend.
My partner was an engineer for one of the 3 largest companies in the WORLD, for 33 years, before he retired. He holds around 20 patents. His experience and his opinion is the same as mine. Oh, two years after he retired, the plant is closing, after 44 years as a top job provider in our town. They're going to Mexico and India.
My best friend and I were in college together, taking engineering. I left because the farm required me to. But that's not even a factor. My best friend made it all the way through. He's still an engineer for a major appliance company. He WAS with a major communications company. His opinions mirrors mine. After leading his company to produce a VERY valuable computer component a few years ago, he watched the company stumble into oblivion in that market. they closed the plant, he lost his job. He's now been the top rated, award winning engineer at another company, who lead the team to develop a very popular and good selling product. The company is in deep trouble. The appliance he designed (I was in on part of it at my last job, they were a customer of ours) is a good seller and profitable. It's a really good piece. Fortunately for him, my old employer did NOT get the contract ot produce parts for that appliance.
I went through the same problems in construction with engineers as I did in manufacturing. Too much school, and ZERO practical knowledge and experience.
I know good engineers exist, I've known a few that I worked with, and I have two who are close friends. In my experience, they are the exception, not the rule. It's been my personal experience that far too much emphasis is placed on degrees and diplomas and not enough is placed on real world knowledge and experience. It's a sad fact that most people go to college to get a degree and a diploma so they can make "big bucks", rather than to LEARN to actually DO SOMETHING and CONTRIBUTE.
And going to college while amassing college loan debt equivalent to 10 years of salary does NOT amount to "perservering":rolleyes: . It's the kid that WORKS their way through college that actually does well with it. THOSE are the ones that come out of college having LEARNED.
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Originally posted by Thrawn
Virgil, your first post is so full of jargo it makes it almost unreadable.
I take it you mean "jargon". Well, not much I can do about it without spending an hour or so trying to rewrite it to translate the "jargon'' used in that particular manufacturing area. I really don't have the time.
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Exactly virgil our company is atracting more and more engineers and mostly they just try to reinvent the wheel.
Realy not looking whats done in the past.
Like for example the stock preparation unit at my work its operating system still has some fault in it.
80 % maybe are still faults from the start of the plant now almost 3 years ago.
We operators many times wrote down the faults to be repaired.
But over and over they just loose the list and let u make a new one.
It been really chaos in our management To many chiefs no indians really its very sad.
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Originally posted by Krusher
Best of luck to you CPxxx. I am sure you will bounce back quickly.
My company will be losing 14,500 fine employees in the very near future. I made it past the first round (15,000) now I get to play wait and see for the next round.
I guess I know who you work for. I worked for BiG Blue.
Thanks but in a way it's the best thing that could happen. I wanted out and now I can leave with some cash. A lot of my colleagues are quite happy and have made great plans for new careers. Several are going to college others are setting up their own businesses. Becoming paramedics, Speech therapists, Chemists, Taxi drivers, truck drivers. One friend moved a mile down the road to a better job earning 10k more. So always a silver lining.
On the engineer's issue my experience gels with Virgil's. I have worked closely with Engineers in all my jobs. I have great respect for many of them but others are simply not up to the job. I could list endlessly the times particularly the younger engineers came up with ideas which were plainly wrong and wouldn't work. The problem is that many of the older and more experienced engineers have moved onto management. Leaving the field open to new graduates who as BUG says who try to re invent the wheel.
The best companies know this and have a decent mentoring system. But in today's climate this is the exception.