A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (General Motors) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people paddling and 1 person steering, while the American team had 7 people steering and 2 people paddling. Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were paddling. Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the paddling team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 2 people paddling the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the paddlers. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices, and bonuses. The pension program was trimmed to 'equal the competition' and some of the resultant savings were channelled into morale boosting programs and teamwork posters. The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off one paddler, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and cancelled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses. The next year, try as he might, the lone designatedpaddler was unable to even finish the race (having no paddles), so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India. Sadly, the End. Here's something else to think about: GM has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US, claiming they can't make money paying American wages. TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter's results: TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while GM racks up 9 billion in losses. GM folks are still scratching their heads, BUT still collecting bonuses... IF THIS WEREN'T SO TRUE IT MIGHT BE FUNNY
I had a bit of real life experience with Corporate America back in the mid 90's. Not quite the same but along the same line; Big Corps was of time and money. There is a fairly large regional pest control company based in the Eastern Pa. area. They had 8-10 field offices in Pa and Md. Somewhere along the line they branched out into the tree/lawn care area. The year I was there we had a hurricane come through and and do substantial damage in one of their areas. The local office was overwhelmed so they call us to help with the backlog. It was about a 40 minute drive from our office to theirs. Our second day there was the last Thursday of the month; which is when we had to be back in the office for a monthly "training" session. We needed about 45 minutes to finish the job we were on but at 1:00 the foreman told u to pack it up. I protested but was shut down. We drove the 40 minutes back to our office. The "training" session was a joke. They spent the first hour of the 2 hour meeting trying to decided how many times the phone should be allowed to ring before it would be considered excessive from the callers point of view. REALLY!!? The next day we went back to the job that didn't get finished the day before. When we finished up we drove back to our local area to do a job. So 3 of us had nearly 3 hours of unproductive travel just so we could listen to the CSR's (Customer Service Reps) decide how long to let the phone ring. I was only there for 9 months. Three years after I left they folded the tree/lawn care division because it wasn't profitable. Geee, I wonder why? Have you ever read the comic strip Dilbert? It's all true.
I'm dealing with this on a smaller scale now. There's a lid I helped develop and it's not going through the lid sorter great, with about 2% come through backwards initially. I suggested 18 months ago that we put in an electronic eye and and an air jet to blow every backwards lid back into the hopper. I was told that would never work and since then a lot of time an money has been spent to modify the lid itself and just about every parameter on the lid sorter has been adjusted and re-adjusted. The failure rate is now below 1% but there's still backwards lids. Eventually the lid supplier was brought in and pretty much told to fix it. So they're adding an electronic eye and an air supply to the sorter and blowing off the backwards lids.
