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October 2002

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Subject:
From:
Steve Thomas <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
TechNet E-Mail Forum.
Date:
Thu, 10 Oct 2002 09:03:05 -0700
Content-Type:
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text/plain (134 lines)
Peter, you've described manufacturing hell and manufacturing heaven
in one post.  I'm sure many of us have experienced the hell to some
degree, but I wonder how many of us have actually experienced the 
positive side?

Our favorite poster at a previous employer read "beatings" as opposed to
"whippings", but certainly the gist was the same.  Same results, too...
management insisted they be removed.  "A threat to morale." was the
rationale.  Like THAT was at risk.  Sheesh.

Thanks for the great post, Peter, as usual.

Steve "still searching for mfg. nirvana" Thomas

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 6:41 PM
To: TechNet E-Mail Forum.; Steve Thomas
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] First Article Buy-off Process for SMT & Wave Solder



I've rarely seen the effectiveness of punishment as an incentive in a job.
The "Fear Factor" may be effective as a short term solution to a problem,
but cannot be held up as a long term method, even with positive inducements
to counter it. It's totally counter-productive.

My last Company went through a very traumatic period for 10 years. The
original company collapsed virtually overnight after a merger turned into a
disaster. The remains of the Company were bought over by an organisation
that was well known as an asset-stripper and for its inability to treat its
workers nicely (but they did make good profits for the shareholders!). Ten
years, during which pay was deep-frozen, and the "management" teams were
rotated around the various sites to see what else they could cut off from
what the previous rotation had left behind. It was like being eaten alive.
There were 7 rounds of redundancy, during which two thirds of the workforce
was sacked, and all this happened during the nineties recession when new
jobs were very few in number, so most of us just ate it and carried on,
just hoping to keep the jobs we had. Of those who were retrenched, the
majority of them were still unemployed a year later, and the redundancy pay
was at best less than three month's salary. The surviving original company
staff had tremendous pride in what they did, and continued to struggle
against the odds to produce good work, but in the end moral was just
crumbling away. An old Punch cartoon with the caption "The whippings will
continue until morale improves" was stuck on many a wall, until the
management teams took offense and ordered them removed.

Things only started to improve when the Chairman was finally forced to
retire, aged 70-something, and a new man was put in. He was much more
human, and once more we dared to feel hopeful that jobs would be safer, pay
freeze would be thawed, career structure would be rebuilt and that we would
be valued for a change.

If workers don't perform well in a job, it's not always their fault, and we
shouldn't seek to punish them without first looking for ways to help them
perform better (though this requires thought, imaginaton, consideration,
patience, tolerence, and is much harder to do than simply hitting someone).
Management frequently should look to themselves for the reason why people
perform badly:-

1. Management hired the wrong person for the job.
2. Inadequate systems and processes make it impossible for operators to do
a good job.
3. ContinuousTraining is not given to keep skills, knowledge and company
expectations up to date.
4. Workers are not treated with courtesy and respect, or even basic
consideration as people. (which is why I hate the term "human resources"
(now reduced to HR to mask the impersonality of the term) that replaced
"personnel", which had a more 'personal' feel to it). People are not just
another spanner or soldering iron or robotic welder - they are the same as
you and me and should be treated accordingly.

Boy! So many opportunities to let off steam today. Thanks!

Peter


-----Original Message-----
From: Hogg, Blair K. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 5:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] First Article Buy-off Process for SMT & Wave Solder

(snip)

This comes down to how you want to manage your business and your people. If
you want to hold people accountable, you've got to have both a system in
place to penalize people when mistakes are made and to reward them when no
mistakes are made. Having merely punitive measures will create dissention
and adversarial relationships. You also need to listen to your people when
they have ideas on how to make the processes better.

Just my $.02 worth,

Blair Hogg
QA Manager
GAI-Tronics Corp.

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