Fuck, shit. Somehow, I've joined a cult

#1

at my new job. The cult of lean manufacturing, the Toyota denomination. They’ve given each of us a copy of “The Toyota Way”. We are required to read them (currently a chapter per week) and then we’ll discuss said chapter at a weekly meeting. This is the third company I’ve worked for trying this lean manufacturing. It failed at the other 2. I’m not hopeful it’ll work here either. It seems to always come down to the same issue: unreliable supply chain. IMO, with the global situation, if you can’t make everything you need in-house, you’re setting yourself up for failure trying to implement this.

But that aside, I object on principle this idea of forcing people to drink the corporate Kool-Aid (especially since it was actually Flavor-Aid!). Pushing the cult mentality on workers is a good way to get stuck with only mindless parrots. Cause frankly, this is a deal-breaker for me.

I’m good at my job. I’m happy to offer suggestions that might be helpful. But I draw the line when it comes to this corporate indoctrination crap.

Kind of takes the fun out.

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#2

Theory Z, JIT inventories have been the ‘fo shizzle’ since the 80’s,But world wide pandemics apparently “fuck a lot of shit up”

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#3

And it doesn’t have to be a pandemic. Trade conflicts, weather, anything that can crop up and get in the way of productivity will screw it up. We got stuck with a bunch of cases that we have to do a shitload of trimming on in order to make them useable. Thank you supplier. Assholes. We have a part that comes from overseas, where we don’t have any idea how many actually arrived because the packaging is so bad parts fell out and none of the boxes have their total counts on them! It’s just so stupid.

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#4

Boeing is in the Lean movement.

Problem is, it doesn’t work for airplanes. Too big, too much NCRs, etc.
We take parts slotted for one line number and put it on another to make delivery.

:man_shrugging:

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#5

Every single client I ever had who tried to implement “lean”, EVERY SINGLE ONE, scrapped it within two years.

One tried to make it work by forcing the SUPPLIER to stockpile inventory, first on the clients property (GAAP and the IRS nixed that) and then in a warehouse rented for the purpose. The latter wound up costing more than the value of the material.

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#6

Reminds me of what’s been brewing at my work.

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#7

Shit, piss, son-of-a-bitch!! I’m going through the first chapter. It’s nothing but a long, dry, sucking of Toyota cock! Useless statistics, facts that have been out of date for 15 years, and LOTS of extra words that serve no purpose. Did this fucker get paid by the word?? How is wasting my time contributing in any way to lean manufacturing?!?!

I have to put the book down every other page. Even in school I’ve never read anything so useless, dry, wordy, and irritating. And you all know how screwed up the public education system is for discouraging actual education.

Twenty-two chapters to cover 14 “management principles.” If you need a sign in how this isn’t going to work, there it is. Fuck.

#8

Well just think in a couple years jap mgt. will be in the dustbin of history and you will have to learn Chinese Authoritarian Supply Chain Mgt. Principals.

#9

I’ve noticed LEAN only works for car companies, where parts are taken immediately, no massive rework, various chances of optional items, etc.

For an airplane company, doesn’t work. We have warehouses for our warehouses…

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#10

I remember a chapter in a very basic “management” class where Boeing was cited as an example as having inventory control systems as basic or simple as having larges bins with commodity parts, that on a normal production cycle you reorder when the decay of parts volume enacts a reorder commonly exposes a “color” in the bin signfying a low level…etc and a yadda yadda.

But I think Broomkot’s basic observation is my understanding too, what is a “Car Company” it is looking at the toyotas and honda’s and recently Ford and GM and Fiat-Chrysler too, for a very modern and a very smart market tuned always looking for more efficiency in product as well as production psychology.

aka volume, aka monopoly profits, and so on.