Walter, I'm sorry! I did know women are lacking in this part of the world, but I would not have thought it was that bad! ;-)
Walter, I'm sorry! I did know women are lacking in this part of the world, but I would not have thought it was that bad! ;-)
Work ethic may be dead or dying, and I do agree with it to a degree, but I also see a very distressing tendancy for corporate leaders to espouse doing the least you can get by with and charging as much as you can for it. This is by no means a lone case, but I have worked with a guy who is a Senior VP in a major company and his philosophy is to produce, "minimally acceptable product." He is PROUD of this approach, talks about it everywhere he goes, and has mentioned it enough that he calls it by it's acronym, MAP. This attitude is very ubiquitous, so while we might have lazy workers producing shoddy stuff, we have their bosses telling them this is exactly what they want.
I spoke with a German who was brought here to the US to head up an American-based German company. He was dumbfounded by our approach. "No quality control, and when profits dip you lay off workers who are needed to produce and know what they are doing, rather than the middle management that is responsible for the dip. And obscene salaries and bonuses for the top guys when workers get laid off." He said this, not me. Mercedes' chairman made much less than Chrysler's when Mercedes bought Chrysler. By the way, he went back to Germany in disgust because he couldn't change approaches.
Well, my experience (26 years in US industry) leads to the opinion that worker motivation is a direct function of management treatment. The euphemism "people are our most important resource" would more honestly be stated "...our most important liability." If some way could be found for an American corporation to be run with *no* employees, the board of directors would gladly lay off everyone in a flash.
Dr. J. Edwards Deming taught Japanese industry all it knows about building high quality products at the lowest possible cost. Companies in the US rejected his input, and he accepted an invitation to consult in Japan. They listened. The following is a direct quote from Dr. Deming in which he responded to those who would blame American workers for the decline of US products: "The problem is management; it's always management."
?Minimal Acceptable Quality? Sounds like a story for CNN. However, it is simply the point beyond which no value is added. The Japaneese have a word for that, it is ?Muda?. Waste. They disdain it above all else. (Juran defined Quality as ?what the customer perceives?) How much more will the average consumer pay for reliability and features (form fit and finish that they will never be aware of our use?)
One story going around manufacturing management circles now is that Lexus doesn?t plate their seat frames. They know that this will result in a light powder of rust during the life of the vehicle but that the owner will never have a reason to know or care. If they plate the frame, what ever cost in dollars and resources will be wasted.
The fact that a German couldn?t learn anything in America doesn?t surprise me. One might note however that during WW2 Tiger tanks were built so well that we could build 10 Shermans for ever Tiger that they built. Tolerances were so tight that when they got them up in Russia during the winter, they wouldn?t run. Tigers were built to last 20 years but considering that the average life of a tank in battle is two hours, this might not have been an intelligent engineering decision.
I might add that I own a Mercedes, have for years and the biggest advantage that I can see to owning one is I never have to buy another. You only need to pay $58. for an over-engineered turn signal flasher once in your life. The Mercedes turn signal flasher is solid state and flashes the turn signals at a very precise duty cycle and time period down to the fractions of a second. If you add a trailer, they still flash at the same speed. Fords use a electro mechanical device that retails at about $3. If you add a trailer they flash faster because the load goes up. Which is value and which is obsessive compulsive?
Neal
"potentially inflammatory"?????
Please don't post anything you consider inflammatory, you will start WW3.
I love this forum. Got my batteries all charged up yesterday reading all of this tripe, took my nameless (probably indonesia 1955) 3? pound 5X7, my $140 Ilex Acutar 165 (very american), my trusty cheap italian tripod, some old film holders made in California, some US military reconaissance film, and made some very satisfying pictures that I stayed up until 3:00 AM printing. Sorry Japan and Germany.
Deming went to American manufacturers when they were running their plants at full production to try to fill pent up demand for consumer products that were unavailable during WW2. Essentially he said: "Stop what your are doing,(Stop what you did to win the war.) retool, restructure,rethink, and I will show you a way to reduce waste". They rightly asked; "Why?" They had more raw material then they knew what to do with. They had more sales than they knew what to do with.
Japan on the other hand (thanks to American B29s) had a clean sheet of paper. If they had won the war, made the world safe for benevolent rule by their Emperor, survived with all their manufacturing facilities intact and possession of limitless sources of raw materials in conquered countries, they almost certainly would have thrown Deming out on his keester too.
American factories have long since satisfied WWII pent up demand. My experience, validated by reliability records published in subscriber-supported (i.e. no advertising) Consumer Reports magazine each April, has been that Japanese automobiles are the most reliable, German cars fall midrange, and American vehicles fail most often. I owned a Mercedes for eight years. Purchased it new. Performed all maintenance - - by the book - - and repairs personally. Got very tired of frequently repairing supposedly over-engineered parts/systems. Replaced it with a Honda Accord. Another eight years have passed. One hundred eighty five thousand miles later, I've done scheduled maintenance, replaced the tires once at 100k, and recently replaced the starter. That's it. I often opined how nice it would have been if Mercedes had done the top level design and Toyota laid out details and manufactured. Now that would be one heck of a car. Lexus doesn't approach things the same way as Mercedes. Until that happens, I'll just muddle along with my Honda turn signal flasher. No idea what technology it uses. It just keeps flashing at a constant rate when called for, with no failures.
Cameras are not automobiles. I am very happy with the set of design/construction compromises Dick Phillips made when producing my Compact II. It doesn't match the fit and finish of a Sinar, but it's not intended to. Different weight targets and expected applications were involved. I do expect that it will last as long as and retain its initial level of functional precision as well as the Sinar. I call this appropriate design. The same cannot be said for American cars compared to their German and Japanese competition.
Jim, I'm curious, when you say "...all of this tripe,..." do you include your first post above?
>Paul,
>You cruel man. That lamb you ate may have been some poor Kiwi's >girlfriend! Just as well it wasn't Australian lamb or it would definitely have >been some bloke's shiela.
>Happy eating ... Walter
Walter, that's terrible! I was born in NZ and now live in Australia - does that mean Paul has eaten TWO of my girlfriends at once? ;-)
I'm going to be sick! - Peter
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