Im afraid most company employees do not stay at companies very long and are not interesed in the history of said company only the here and now. Sad but a fact.

I have to agree Howard. When I was in industry I reckoned such knowledge was on roughly a 20 year cycle; the answer often lay forgotten in filing cabinets and only the old timers were aware of that; even to the point of finding the information to present to those busily re-inventing the wheel.

It must be worse now with the new layers of digital information laid down like sediments to entomb those records.

Brian

On 15 February 2024 at 19:53 Howard Lewis Said:

…

Before retirement was twice sent on Kaizen seminars, to help brainstorm problems. In both cases the problem had been solved several years previously on non current products.

…
Howard

A clear sign of something rotten in the State of Denmark. The methodology specifically says that Kaizen meetings shouldn’t be held if the answer is already known.  Howard’s employer had attacked the wrong problem; they needed to use Kaizen to find and fix the reason their organisation was so forgetful – probably poor record keeping.

I sympathise though because my employer radically downsized it’s HQ operation dumping about 60% of the team in one fell move.  This was done to save money and improve efficiency.  Result: a severe dose of corporate Alzheimer’s.  Out in the sticks we suddenly got panic calls from HQ who had lost the plot, discovering they had many management problems where they didn’t know one or more of who, what, when, where or how!    No idea how it turned out as I retired.    My guess is it was painfully sorted out eventually and that a great deal of time and money was wasted.  Probably still many skeletons lurking in the closets.

On the whole change is necessary, and a good thing done properly at the right time, but it’s all too frequently botched, or left until it’s too late.

By the by, when a Lean Six Sigma team turned up, it usually meant that unbeknownst to them everyone was happily working in the Last Chance Saloon, and it wasn’t going to last.  A common reaction to reform was to ignore and belittle the need for change, shortly after which people were laid off in droves, and maybe the employer closed down entirely.  Danger signs:  Queen’s Award for Industry, Engineer running the company, new Accountant, and Kaizen or similar in the building.   Exceedingly painful for all caught in the mangle, especially for those who loved their work, couldn’t believe anything was wrong, and were convinced they had a safe job for life.

Dave

When I was still in gainful employment I developed the ‘blue **sed fly” theory. Give a problem to one of the new young MBA trained people and they would rush about like the aforesaid insect for months before coming up with a solution (which might even work). Give the same problem to an old hand and he’ll probably have done something similar before, so the solution is produced in short order. The BAF impresses the big chiefs with his/her energy and drive, whereas the old hand is pensioned off as he doesn’t rush about.

On 28 March 2024 at 23:36 Howard Lewis Said:

Funnily enough, having an Engineer running the company was not a danger sign…

Howard

I should have explained why I said it was a danger sign!

It’s not because engineers are automatically bad managers who don’t understand people, money or markets!  It’s because prejudice against engineers means they are rarely allowed to take charge.  An engineer getting the top job often meant that everyone else had failed, and the company was already on the rocks.

Commercial success is very much a team game, and organisations have to be arranged to get the best out of everybody.  As no-one understands everything, it can’t be expected that an engineer will understand the accounts, or that an accountant will understand technology, or that either will notice that the business relies on a product-line that’s becoming uncompetitive.

Most specialists have blind-spots.  Engineers tend to insist on producing the best possible product, irrespective of time and cost.  Bad because most customers only want ‘value for money’, and they want it now please.   Accountants obsess with balancing the books, and tend to be risk averse.   Managers tend to bog down in people, admin and operational problems – hiring, firing, disciplinary issues, budget management,  scheduling, and sorting out problems etc.  They’re often prevented from improving efficiency or effectiveness by everyone else – because change always hurts somebody!   The workforce tend only to see immediate local problems, and are often blissfully unaware of serious issues elsewhere.   Shareholders and owners tend to obsess about profits, and might cheerfully destroy a company by asset stripping it.   Leaders worry about the future, and might not notice serious operational problems or structural issues.  They also tend to play politics, worrying more about their bonuses and next job, than the organisation itself.  Thus we see the Post Office leadership rewarded with large payouts and honours, whilst guilty of overseeing an scandalous large-scale injustice of the worst kind.

Difficult to get the balance of skills right and then maintain it.  Many organisations get themselves into a position where they can’t or won’t change, or fail to implement change effectively.  In the last 3 decades of the 20th century, large numbers of British manufacturing companies collapsed.  They had failed to remain competitive in a rapidly changing world, more to do with attitudes than engineering.  It’s hard to teach old dogs new tricks.  For example the almost universal resistance to metrication was toxic because  customers mostly wanted metric, and had absolutely no loyalty to Imperial measure.    Allowing elderly foremen in the 1970s to tell youngsters straight from college to ignore metric was was a bad mistake.

Sad but true that by the time an engineer was running the company, it was too late.   Many exceptions of course.

Dave