In response to a post a few days ago called "How About Multi-Skilled Managers?" two emotional responses were logged in almost immediately – one from "Bill" who wrote a disparaging piece about unqualified managers and the ‘strategy of the week’ approach he had experienced on the shop floor of a big machining plant, and an equally passionate response from "Mike" who defended management and trashed negative guys like Bill.
The matter of people is a real big problem in American manufacturing and a real big problem with lean. While I know nothing about either Bill or Mike, who they work for or what the history is in each case, I do know a lot of people who think like either Bill or Mike. Their attitudes about each other and lean are not uncommon. Anyone who wants to know just how ridiculously polarized management and the production folks can be ought to spend a few minutes scanning the posts to the Auto Talk web forum of the Detroit News. They go way beyond work issues and get right to each other’s family lineage from time to time.
This big old can of snakes needs to be opened, and now is an ideal time to do it. I’m off to Las Vegas for the International Six Sigma / Lean Conference all next week and will be away from my blogging post, so I thought I’d throw a week’s worth of gasoline on the fire, then get out of town, leaving Kevin and the rest of you to deal with the inferno. I’m blogging on the installment plan, and this is the first, with several more scheduled to pop up throughout the week.
The polarization between the hourly folks and management is primarily a management problem and it is management’s responsibility to fix it. Most of what I have to say will be aimed at that group, however, Bill – you are way beyond needing to wake up and smell the coffee. You and the guys working in your plant are being buried alive in an avalanche of coffee beans and you’re sleeping through it.
You say, "Dumbing down your hourly employees by moving the plantsite to an impoverished part of the country where wages are in the toilet is no way to produce a quality product." Just who are those "dumbed down" people, Bill? and in what "impoverished part of the country"? Are you talking about the machinists at the Toyota engine plant in West Virginia? or at the Toyota assembly plant in Kentucky or the Nissan plant in Mississippi? I don’t know where your plant is Bill, but the people in those plants are kicking everyone’s butt in the U.S. in terms of cost, quality and delivery, so it seems safe to me that they are kicking your’s too.
Or maybe you are talking about the aerospace machining companies clustered around NASA in Huntsville, Alabama. Or did you mean the Shingo Prize winning Raytheon plant in Tucson? or perhaps the BAE Systems plant in South Dakota that cut the manhours in half for the Mk41 Vertical Launch Systems and , along the way, made defects virtually non-existent and simply does not miss on time shipments. How about the aircraft engine turbine machining outfits in North Carolina and Oklahoma? Is that who you meant? You see, I see a lot of great American manufacturers in just about every part of the country and I haven’t found the dumbed down ones yet.
As a quality person, you must have some math skills – so I am sure you can work out the numbers.
You say $14 an hour is not enough for skilled machinists like you and your comrades. OK, let’s say we gave you a machine, a heap of material, and 14 bucks. You say you would be willing to work for 30-40 minutes. At the end of that time, there would be a pile of finished parts.
Now let’s say we went to one of those dumb guys in the impoverished regions. He would work the whole hour and there would be an even bigger pile of finished parts.
But it gets worse, Bill. Now let’s say we gave the same machine, same material and same $14 to a Mexican guy. He would have some problems, crank out a few defects and work a little slower, but even after all of that, he would leave a pile of finished parts bigger than either American guy – in fact, about ten times bigger.
But its gets even worse than that. Do the same deal with a Chinese guy and the resultant pile of parts would be 30 or 40 times bigger than yours.
Traditional old American machinists are good – but no better than the new American machinists. While there may have been some shade of truth to the value of the tradition of machining in the Rust belt and the East Coast 30 years ago when that rationalization first came forth, we are long past that now, Bill.
And while you and your friends are better than your Mexican and Chinese counterparts, you are not 10, 20 or 30 times better. You seem to have a very misguided notion of what the fundamental problem is, Bill. The fact is that the world’s buyers of machined parts can find a better deal overseas than what you and your compadres have to offer. You – personally – are not competitive. That is the problem with American manufacturing. Management did not create that problem – getting management off your back will not solve that problem. The unions cannot solve that problem, and the government cannot solve it. You want to be paid 25 times more than other people for the same work. No law and no contract can make that math work. You telling management to go away and let you manufacture the way your daddy and his daddy did it will not work.
Your company is trying to minimize the damage by becoming lean. Lean will never close the gap between you and the Chinese machinist. It might, however, help to create enough savings elsewhere in the stream of production to offset your premium. Your company becoming lean is the only hope you have. It would behoove you to be cooperative. Undoubtedly, your company has some managers who are hard to get along with, and they make mistakes, and go about lean the wrong way. That is pretty common. But it does not change the fact that lean is the only hope of saving your job, so I think maybe you ought to quit complaining, quit badmouthing other American machinists, quit criticizing your management, and figure out how to help.
The alternative, my friend, is for your plant to close. In that event, you have a lot more to lose than the ‘runny nosed frat boys’. It has been my observations that runny nosed frat boys with MBAs have much better prospects out in the job market than overpaid machinists with bad attitudes.
don says
Pretty good tongue lashing for Bill and he probably deserves it. Now how about the one for management, especially those making 400+ times the wage rate declaring lean implementation and the company is going bankrupt. If they would outsource their jobs with the same vigor as the job cuts, plant sells and outsourcing moves more attention may be focused on true improvement.
Karen Wilhelm says
Regarding well-paid (or overpaid, depending on who you ask) shop floor workers, I’ve been wondering lately how many of their kids go to college to become engineers, technicians or scientists. We bemoan the future shortage of those people here in the U.S., but maybe we need to look at who is financing their educations. If it’s mom and/or dad, they had better be making a good hourly rate.
In other words, which foot are we shooting ourselves in?
Dave in the UK says
Nice to see that you have included an English company in your list of world class Businesses. I have to say on the whole I agree with the most part with what you have said however I disagree with one statement that you made. “while you and your friends are better than your Mexican and Chinese counterparts”. Whilst I am unable to comment on Mexican workers I know from personal experience that this statement is simply not true, in respect of china at least and it is time that we in the developed world stopped kidding ourselves and in particular our workers.
Here in the UK we have seen much of our manufacturing base relocated to China during the last ten years or so. Unfortunately for managers like me we had little choice but to assist in this relocation. Consequently, I have spent many months living and working within the Chinese economy. Working with and for western companies who are driving their economic boom. I have also worked for and with some of the very companies you mentioned, both in the UK and USA. So I feel that I am in a position to comment from personal experience.
Anyone who actually believes that the average skilled worker either working in Europe or in the USA is any better than their counterparts in China is deluding themselves. Believe me, engineers and technicians in China are highly educated, technically competent and every bit as skilled as their counterparts in the west. To suggest otherwise is foolhardy in the extreme.
These boys are eating our lunch and it is time managers, unions and workers got together and started looking at ways in which we can stay one step ahead. Lean manufacturing is essential. Those companies that have enthusiastically adopted Lean have made a start. To those managers and workers that are resisting I would say one thing. Beware the Chinese, today it’s our lunch, tomorrow it with be our breakfast and supper and if we don’t meet the challenge together “workers and managers” then we had better look for something else to do to earn a living for us and our children.
Our manufacturing heritage here in the UK is almost non-existent now BEWARE AMERICA it is time to stop all the old petty rivalries rooted in the past and move on. We in the west are facing a major competitive problem and the only way to face it is together LOOKING FORWARD.
Jimbo says
Bill Waddell, you are probably a very short sited individual. I hear you on the economic benefit of buying machined parts in Mexico and China. However, what sounds good on the surface doesn’t look so good when you dig a little deaper.
I remember when we were sending only the labor intense assembly jobs overseas. Now we have sent the machinist jobs and are rapidly sending customer support call centers overseas. It is just a matter of time before they send “Lean Coordination” jobs overseas. The “SUCKING SOUND” that Ross Perot predicted is getting louder and louder.
The greed of the few mega millionaires will continue to stratefy American society until there will be the very rich and the very poor with no middle class. If you happen to be one of the very rich, don’t be so happy about it…. where will you spend your wealth? When there is no middle class, the restaurants will disappear, the high value stores will disappear, there will be no concerts or theaters to buy tickets from, etc.
Go ahead, send all the jobs overseas!!!
Bill Waddell says
Jimbo, I think you ought to read a little more of my opinions before leaping to such conclusions. While I am guilty of being very shortsighted in some areas (for instance I spent most of my morning thinking about what I was going to have for lunch without giving a moment’s thought to dinner), I think you will find that I take a bit longer view of manufacturing.
How exactly do you propose to restore American manufacturing, Jimbo? The economic benefit of buying from Mexico or China is a hard fact, my friend. The solution is to establish a greater economic benefit from keeping the work here. My recommendation is lean manufacturing. After all, it seems to be working out OK for Toyota and all of the people who work for them.
Do you have a better idea? Or do you think ranting and raving about Ross Perot, trashing me, and spouting liberal class envy/warfare propaganda is a better solution than emulating Toyota?. It seems to me that all of that has been done before – especially insulting me – and it does not seem to have saved too many jobs.