An Idea for Workplace Organization

Before retiring I spent many years organizing the activities within an engineering/manufacturing operation where we designed, developed and manufactured a wide range of products and processes all based upon one technology providing them to vastly different applications and customer types. Unlike many manufacturing organizations (at least as I imagined them), we did not limit the work we took on to that which fit a set of processes currently in place, but often accepted jobs requiring us to devise, not only new processes but often new tools. This was the greatest and most differentiated value we brought to the marketplace. At the center of the basic structure was a product engineering staff whose responsibilities included interacting with customers to understand their needs, and then design products that fit our existing facilities and capabilities if possible. If needed capabilities did not exist, they coordinate with the process engineering and manufacturing groups to develop them. The manufacturing arm was comprised of a number of work areas with specialized skills and facilities through which the work flowed. We had about a dozen or so such areas. The work flow was erratic. For example: some jobs would go from department 1 to7 to 3 to 7 then 6 ending in 12; While other might go from 2 to 5 to 6 to 5 to 11 to 2 to 7 to 12. The mix was varied, not only in type, but also volume and complexity. Some tasks would require skills developed over years while others had very simple steps that could be taught in less than an hour. On rare occasions we had demand for enough volume of a single product to warrant setting up a series of operations with dedicated staff, through which flowed the same product in the same sequence. We tried to walk a tight rope, balancing efficiency (cost) and reliability of delivery. If we staffed each department to the maximum capacity we could expect, there would be too much idle time. If we staffed to the most efficient level, we would not make our delivery commitment. We made some effort to have a bit of flexibility, but with volume of work within a department varying even within a given day, it was at best marginally effective. Prior to my retirement, I started exploring another possible way to organize ourselves to increase our efficiency, improve our reliability and to maximize “quality of life” for our associates. We would start by reducing the staff of each manufacturing department to a supervisor and enough of the most experienced individuals to handle the absolute minimum level of work anticipated. Each job would have a process flow maintained on the network with anticipated arrival dates in each department adjusted automatically as work was completed in a given area. The heads of the departments would then compare the capacity within the department with the impending demand, and if needed, call for a qualified associate from a pool of flex staff. The supervisors would be measured on the quality of work done in their department, the cost (mostly labor) and the amount of “wait” time (the time a job was in the department waiting for work to be done on it). I envisioned a division within which resides a pool of associates with varied skills and skill levels needed in all manufacturing departments from which, as the workload increased beyond the minimum staffing within their departments, the supervisors could draw additional help . The manager of this pool would oversee the training and staffing and would be measured on the availability of the skill at the proper level and the quality of the work of the flex staff on each assignment. Idle time within the division is to be another measure of their performance. If the skill called for by manufacturing was not available, the department supervisor would request an individual by name who they then train for the processes. When any of the flex staff was idle, the manager would coordinate with the manufacturing departments to provide “on the job” training during their slower times. The supervisors would select the processes theyteach to the flax staff, choosing ones that they anticipated would be of greatest value to them in the future, Thus, the flexible staff gains experience and advances their skills as they move from job to job or are provided special training. Their pay would be determined by three factors. There would be a number of pay grades each with a wide range of salaries. The pay grade for an associate is to be determined by the complexity and the number of processes they were qualified to perform. Exactly where within that range their pay fell, is to be determined by their performance at each assignment as reported by the manufacturing supervisors. This would be their base pay. On top of the base pay they would earn bonuses, which would represent a significant part of the total pay based on the time allotted for the task and the level of skill provided. From a “quality of life” stand point, the flex tech, though some of the work may be mundane, would not be stuck in a tedious routine, changing from department to department and process to process. They would also be learning new skills which, along with the quality and quantity of their work, would be reflected in their pay. Arrangements could be made between the manufacturing supervisors and the flex division manager to accommodate wishes of associates to move from a flex to a permanent position or vice versa. Inevitably there will be idle time in the division. Training in a new skill may not be practical at times, in which case the idle flex associates would be encouraged to use the time to pursue on-line courses. People differ not only in their basic capabilities but also in their character. Some would prefer the comfort of working in one department on a narrow set of processes, while others get bored doing similar tasks and enjoy doing a wide range of chores and continually learning new ones. This system would accommodate both characteristics. In practice each job would have a routing indicating the process required in each department and estimated touch time (the time the parts are actually worked on for each). When a job enters, the department will estimate its completion time. Based on this, the system calculates the estimated time of arrival for each department and the total amount of time required of each skill level. The supervisor, equipped with a list of available individuals and their qualifications in the flex pool, could call for a specific person or a skill for a specified time. The department would be charged based on the time and the assigned value of the skill. The supervisor has an incentive to hire the lowest skill level required for the task. If, because of availability or quality of work or other factors, they choose someone with a higher skill, they pay a higher price. Other factors they may consider in making their selection could be the work habits and compatibility of the flex associate with the permanent staff. If properly structured, such a system should incentivize the staff at all levels to improve the reliability of delivery commitments while improving the efficiency and quality of life

Who is Killing the Children?

A couple of weeks ago I happened to watch a special about the latest Israel/Gaza war on Democracy Now . The segment featured Nome Chomsky an MIT history and linguistics professor known for his progressive views and a non-xenophobic take on US history (his history book was banned from some Southern public schools) In the discussion he mentioned a Bob Shafer piece on CBS where he opined on the conflict. The host, Am y Goodman, showed the clip in which Bob Shafer denounced Hamas for causing the deaths of so many Palestinian children. During his presentation Shafer showed an old clip of Golda Meyer saying that “she can forgive Palestinians for killing Israeli children but she cannot forgive them for making Israel kill theirs”. (may not be the exact words). Nome Chomsky then accused Shafer of reciting Israeli propaganda as he claimed was typical of most US media. My reaction upon hearing Golda Meyer’s comment was: a nice catchy phrase but what a ridicules statement. No one can make a country do heinous things. Israel chose to use a method of war which results in heavy “collateral” damage to minimize the loss of its own soldiers (to date the ratio of casualties are over 2,000, mostly civilians versus 67 of whom there were only three civilians). Assume for the moment Israel has a legitimate reason for attacking Gaza. It claimed that its mission was to destroy tunnels used by Hamas to infiltrate Israel and carry out terrorist acts. There are many tactics Israel could have employed to this end. It could send in ground troops without the bombardment. After all, Israel has great military superiority in manpower, weapons, intelligence and training without including its air-power. This tactic, however, would result in greater Israeli casualties but on the other hand not inflict as much damage on the civilian population. (Years ago I saw a piece early on in the last war with Iraq which showed a tank bombarding a tenement building from which a sniper was firing. The commentator mentioned a protest by the British forces also fighting in the area about the disproportionate use of force. They said that in this situation, instead of killing numerous civilians who after all we were there to liberate, the Brits would have sent in a squad of soldiers to flush out the sniper. Granted, the guy in the tank was much safer than the soldiers in the building. The use of the tank was a choice.) Another tactic could be to destroy the tunnels from the Israeli side. After all, a tunnel has two openings. Instead of softening up the are around the entrance to the tunnel with air and artillery bombardment then sending in troops to destroy it, why not destroy the tunnel from the exit side. Israel CHOSE the tactic which results in the greatest number of civilian casualties. To be fair, Gaza also makes a choice on where to place the rockets. The issue is that there is little value placed on Palestinian lives and great value on Israeli. In this conflict the current ratio of total number of Palestinians killed to Israelis is about 30 to 1 and civilians about 500 to 1. When an Israeli soldier is captured in the course of battle it is deemed a “kidnapping” and there is much made of it in our press. However, The capture of hundreds of Palestinians is called an “arrest” and there is not much said about it. (It seems like the ratio needs to be on the order of thousands to one to be noteworthy.) A third way, though strategic and not tactical is to end the war. A blockade, by international law is considered an act of war. As long as Gaza is under siege, it is at war with Israel. One could argue that the rockets fired by Gaza are not a terrorist act as claimed by the Israelis and US media, but a military act of one combatant against another. If the blockade’s intention is to keep rockets out of the hands of the Palestinians, it obviously has not worked. Lifting the blockade would end an act of war and if the rockets continue, it then, though of questionable effectiveness, may be called an act of terror. Well, in any case, Mrs. Meyer and Mr. Shafer, Israel is not forced to kill children. It makes a conscious choice to do so.

Teatopia

I read an interesting article written by Elias Isquith in Salon entitled “Tea Party’s embarrassing irony: How it’s ideal nation rejects basic American Beliefs”, much of which is commentary on a piece written by Reihan Salam, a conservative pundit who in his article coins the term “Teatopia”. What he describes is essentially a childish pipedream of a Federalist America where power is shifted from the federal government to state governments. States would put in place structures that are requested by their populace and corporate lobbyists would now look to the states instead of a central government to bestow favors upon them. The beauty of this system, from a conservative standpoint, is that states would evolve populated by people sharing values and ideas of how their children should be brought up and taught. If you live in a state whose policies do not align with your values, you can just move to another state. In time, California and Vermont can become even more liberal and the Carolinas more conservative. One could offer public pre-K and K-12 or even publicly funded college education, whereas another could provide vouchers for charter, internet or religious schools. Politics would be a friendly affair because everyone in the states avows the same ideologies. The role of the federal government becoming minimal, federal taxes would shrink and state taxes rise. In such a world we would become “50 mini states where everyone agrees”. The issue Mr. Isquith has with this (Reihan Salam does not propose this structure but just describes it as the Tea Party dream) is that it is anathema to the notion of democracy. “Democracy, it should go without saying, is not a system designed to tackle the problem of what to do when everyone is on the same page. You don’t need to venerate and inculcate the principles of compromise, pluralism and cooperation in a land where nobody questions what to do or how to do it.” Unfortunately the dream described by Salam, though maybe unattainable and impractical, is real. A segment of the population has convinced themselves (or been convinced) that it must be “their way or the highway”. Sharon Engels, when she ran for the Senate said that if we can’t get what we want at the ballot box, we will have to resort to 2nd amendment remedies. Another Tea Party Republican lamented that “the reason we are where we are is because we did not hold to our principles and were willing to compromise”. There is no sense of needing to live within a community of people with varied priorities , values and cultures and figuring out how to accommodate as many of the diverse interests as possible. That, after all is successful governance. Not bunching people with common interests together and providing only for a segment of the community aligned with you. I would like to expand on this a bit. Setting the issue of democracy aside, to make progress and to improve anything, there need to be countervailing forces at play. To invent the lever there needed to be a desire to move a rock and an inability to move it adequately. Here the two forces are the desire and the inability. Lacking one or the other, there is no lever. In our political system, there has been a pull from the left and one from the right. One wanting change, the other to stand still. These countervailing forces acting together, allows us to progress yet within cautious restraints. Our system works. The Soviet Union lacked any opposition and thus collapsed as in time also do all other dictatorships. Today much is written about the advantages of divergent points of view developed through varied experience, education or discipline, in solving problems, developing systems and creating new stuff. This variety could reside in an individual who has been exposed to varied cultures, socioeconomic conditions and a range of occupations. Or it can exist in a team made up of individuals, each with their differences along these lines from other members. Even if not for the issue of democracy as described by the author, I would expect that a Teatopia, made up of pockets of like thinking people, would stagnate at best, or wither and die or more likely be taken over by a foreign power. Fortunately neither of the authors expects Teatopia to go beyond the stage of a pipedream, however real it is, and I agree. We survived the pull from the Left in the 60s and will survive the pull from the right in the early part of the twenty first century and be stronger for having felt these pressures.

Income Inequality

I read an article written by Robert T. McGee, Director of Macro Strategy and Research, US Trust, which I found interesting. It appeared in issue 26. 2014 of a US Trust publication entitled Capital Acumen under the title “Income Inequality: U. S. Versus the World. He starts out agreeing that income inequality has increase in the developed world over the last three decades. Included in his article is a chart showing the Per Capita GDP, the GINI (%) coefficient and the ratio of the richest 10% Average income to the Poorest 10%. (The GINI coefficient measures income inequality. 0% is the case where all households earn the same income and 100% if one household has all the income and the all the others have none. So the lower the coefficient the smaller the income inequality) He sites globalization and technology, changes in policies and institutions, and differences in education among the reasons. He points out that “the average person in the rich world would be among the best off with the same income in a poor country”. This fact draws immigrants from poor countries who take low paying jobs, into the US. He concludes that inequality is overwhelmingly caused by inequality between rich and poor countries rather than inequality within countries suggesting that inequality should be judged on an absolute rather than a relative scale. By the absolute measure, poverty is minimal in the rich world. He ends his opening salvo with “Other than the corrosive effects of envy, there is less reason to care if income inequality is high as long as the bottom decile has adequate income”. Following is a list of the top ten economies giving their Per capita income, GINI (%) and the ratio of the Richest 10% average income to the poorest 10%. United States, $ 51.7, 45, 15; China, $9.2, 47.4, 21.8; Japan, $35.9, 37.6, 4.5;Germany, $38.7, 27, 6.9; France, $35.3, 32.7, 8.3; United Kingdom, $36.6, 40, 13.6; Brazil, $11.7, 50.8, 37.1; Russia, $17.5, 41.7, 12.8; Italy, $29.8, 31.9, 11.7; India, $3.8, 36.8, 8.6l WORLD, $12.2, 39, 12. I have some real issues with his logic. Poverty is not an absolute. The idea of being poor goes beyond just do you have a roof over your head and some food in the stomach. By that standard, homeless guys sleeping in Shinjuku under the L in large cardboard boxes and begging for their meals are not poor. They have a roof over their heads and are not starving. Reality is that we humans have needs beyond these two and most of those are relative. The absolute argument is weak. The same logic says that by absolute measures a poor man today is better off than a rich man thousands of years ago. The cardboard box is more comfortable than a cold, damp cave; their life expectancy is much greater; they can see and be more aware of the world around them, read and write, flush their toilets, and of course they can watch TV. That being said, I would bet that a rich man then, as a rich man now, would be smiling more often than a poor man. In fact I saw a compelling argument (I think it was from the right) on TV supporting poverty in relative terms. It talked about the relatively low cost of living, specifically in Texas, where a poor man by national poverty standards could live quite well compared to someone with the same income in New York. The argument went further, justifying low wages, again because the cost of living is low. (I have some sympathy for that position.) I am also not sure about the point of immigrants from poor countries taking low paying jobs significantly contributing to the inequality. Where I live, I see many more Indian immigrants working as doctors, engineers and businessmen than I do bagging groceries in the Piggly Wiggly. I don’t know if this is still the case, but after the large expansion of land was finished, US emigration policy, (unless one was seeking asylum or had other unique circumstance only allow more educated and higher skilled immigrants into the country. I believe the lower skilled labor primarily entered through illegal means. As to the causes of inequality, Robert McGee, said “research at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found “trends in technology, policies and education”, were the key drivers of changes in wage inequality and employment in the United States, Germany, Norway and other countries”. “Policies and institutional effects such as declining unionization, product market deregulation, declining tax wedges and reduced unemployment benefit replacement rates were found to raise inequality, but also to increase employment.” He then goes on to says that growth in education not only reduces inequality but increases employment. “Shifting demographics have substantial effects on income inequality. These include increased female participation, smaller household structures (single parents), increased part time work versus full time work and an increased disparity in men’s earnings. Assortative mating, an increased tendency of comparably compensated partners to form households, can add to inequality in a society.” I can’t disagree with that except to give some possible explanations for these factors. Increased female participation was brought about by rising costs and stagnating family income pushing women into the workforce. This exacerbated the situating, with women’s increased participation the labor pool grew further driving down the market price for labor. I don’t believe the smaller household structure is primarily attributed to single parents. As a society advances, the marrying age increases and young people don’t immediately move from their parent’s home into a family, but spend some time living alone. With two members of a household forced to work, there is a willingness, if not a desire, for one member to work part time and part time work pays less and provides fewer benefits. I think that more and more people are living in homogeneous communities thus limiting the opportunity to meet people in different socioeconomic conditions. Mr. McGee goes on to write about income mobility citing a study by Raj Chetty, a professor of economics at Harvard which says that the odds of a young person staying in the bottom decile today are not much different than they were 30 and 50 years ago. I would add that given the larger gap between the bottom and top 10%, when they move up from the bottom, they are not moving into quite as nice a spot. Also I think a more significant measure of mobility would be the odds of moving from the bottom 10% to the top 10%. My guess is that the odds would not be the same today. Ho goes on to say that in northern European countries it is easier to move from the bottom to the top, because of the smaller difference. My comment here is a “well duh”. He goes on to say the it is more appropriate to compare the United States, which has the largest income inequality of the 10 largest economies, to world inequality rather than the other large economies because we have the greatest diversity in our population, an unusually large share of the world’s richest most educated and entrepreneurial people. I’m not sure what he is saying here except maybe that “them that’s got, git”. The author concludes that “America’s income inequality is the natural outcome of being the land of opportunity” and ends with the right wing mantra: “The real issue is raising living standards and making opportunity for advancement as accessible as possible, It’s important that envy and resentment of success not stymie the effort to grow the economy, because the evidence is overwhelming that regardless of inequality trends, it takes a rising tide to lift all boats.” While the tide has risen and the yachts are at ever greater heights, I think it would be hard to convince the bottom decile that they are any better off in their dinghies.

"Showing Off"

I saw a presentation on TED Talks not too long ago that spoke about the human ability to adapt. The presenter suggested that there is a basic level of happiness, driven by brain chemistry, genetics and some other factors, though they may slowly change over time, determine part of the person’s character. If they encounter an event however pleasant or tragic, within a year they return to their inherent level of happiness, whether high or low. In a different talk I saw a cheerful paraplegic who participated in the development of a system that allowed him to control robotic devices with his eyes. He got a kick out of demonstrating this by flying a drone on stage from a remote location, Other dramatic examples of our adaptability I’ve run across come to mind. Years ago I saw a photograph of an old woman in a magazine, a push cart peddler during the German occupation in a Russian city. Her cart was set up beneath a tree from which a man was hanging by his neck. My first reaction was: “how could she be so callous?” But upon reflection, men hanging from trees, over time became the norm and she adapted. I remember the gasoline shortage in the seventies when we had to line up for gas. Before the shortage we would not even tolerate two cars in front of us but after only a couple of weeks, I would consider it a lucky day if I only had to wait one hour. I remember certain rules in place when I was stationed in Saigon in the mid-sixties. One of them was “don’t stand in groups on the sidewalk waiting for a bus, stay in a building till it comes”. From time to time there were incidents in the city where a hotel housing soldiers or a restaurant would get bombed and for a day everyone followed this rule. However, by the next day things were back to normal, everyone congregating on the sidewalk in bunches waiting for a bus or a taxi. The speaker also touched on the fleeting nature of joy derived from the acquisition of material goods. This happiness, he claimed, is short lived, lasting only a few days, weeks or months. I think the way we extend or repeat the pleasure is by “showing off”. We become accustomed to our trinkets no matter how grand or small. The vacation homes, the fast cars, a piece of art, a yacht or a nice piece of clothing are soon taken for granted and the happiness they once brought becomes a distant memory. By sharing these and the stories related to them we revive, at least momentarily, the pleasures they once offered us. The same can be said of even the more esoteric things that bring some happiness into our lives. Guiding someone on a sightseeing tour of a place that we were once fascinated by but now don’t even notice can bring its beauty back into our eyes or the marvel into our hearts. So don’t judge us showoffs so harshly. We are probably just trying to re-live past joys and not demonstrating our superiority.

Back to the Dark Ages

Following Is extracted from Merriam-Webster’s on line Dictionary. civilized adjective : marked by well-organized laws and rules about how people behave with each other : polite, reasonable, and respectful : pleasant and comfortable Full Definition of CIVILIZED : characteristic of a state of civilization ; especially : characterized by taste, refinement, or restraint See civilized defined for English-language learners » Related to CIVILIZED Synonyms ACCOMPLISHED, CULTIVATED, COUTH, CULTURED, GENTEEL, POLISHED, REFINED Antonyms BARBARIC, BARBAROUS, PHILISTINE, UNCIVILIZED, UNCULTURED, UNGENTEEL, UNPOLISHED, UNREFINED Restraint is the key word in the above definition. We humans have a number of forces combining to move us to action. There are the “animal instincts” inherent in our species, genetic pre-disposition passed down by our ancestors , cultural and familial habits handed down from generation to generation, and our individual brain chemistries and experiences over time. These forces lead us to act in our self- interest. Sometime this self-interest (Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”) aligns with the interest of society as a whole, but often it does not only, not align, but works in opposition to the general good. Over time as societies develop, these forces are brought more and more in line with the well-being of society, through individual restraint or those imposed by government, church, community or family. Men have a natural urge to mate from early teens and women have the ability to bear children even younger. As we have developed, in the more advanced societies we have come to realize that early childbirth limits the potential of a woman, and so we have enacted laws to limit the age for consensual sex and in the West, custom has driven the marriage age for women to the late twenties. Another natural urge is polygamy but laws and customs have enforced monogamy. Slavery has been banned and cruelty is declining either by law or custom as we become more civilized, and our understanding of ourselves and the world around us increases, more and more individual instincts are suppressed and there is an ever increased dependence on one another. In this country, countervailing forces have increasingly pushed back on advancing society and civilization while trying to shift the balance from societal good more to individual drives in the name of freedom. This push is coming from the Right and most strongly from the extreme religious Right. The effort to further increase the equality between the genders is seen as a threat to family structure. The right of women to decide whether to conceive or carry to birth is gradually being eroded state by state. The Right is against setting a minimum wage and some argue that nature within the free market should determine how much labor costs and how wealthy the wealthy and poor the poor. Furthermore, there are movements to totally deregulate the markets, leaving them unencumbered and the social good to chance. The right to carry firearms has been expanded and laws like Stand Your Ground (I have an image of a middle aged white guy with a big belly standing with his legs apart and arms crossed facing down punks, hoods and other scary people) are passed The right is trying to move us back to the “Wild West” days where not society, but each man is responsible for defending himself and his family. The religious fundamentalists are dismissing science and want our children to learn that the world was created in six days some six thousand years ago and politicians representing them are fighting any attempt to save the planet from manmade environmental catastrophes. Recently several states have even tried to legalize discrimination based on one’s religious beliefs. The World is experiencing change at an ever increasing pace. These changes; social, political, technological and environmental are making heads spin. And as with any change, there are risks and people are frightened. Conservatives politicians are stoking the fears and are trying to, not only stem the tide of progress, but move back the clock of civilization. The danger of this move is that as we did a millennium ago, we will slip into a modern version of the “Dark Ages” with its chaos and cruelty. That having been said, I am optimistic. Though the Conservatives are taking advantage of our fears and ignorance, cooler heads will prevail and our societies will continue to progress and we will continue to become ever more civilized, relinquishing more and more of our base urges for the good of all those we share this Blue Planet with.