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. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [This e-mail is confidential and may also be privileged. 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