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comment by blackbootz
blackbootz  ·  2747 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What's something you've been trying to do more of recently?

That video is really something. The assembly line is just such a massive feat of engineering.

I probably misunderstood what Six Sigma was when I first read about it. Jack Welch popularizing a management philosophy sounded like conflict resolution and not systems implementation. But now I understand it more. It sounds like Six Sigma is best suited for algorithmic, repeatable processes.

And what's your goal in earning your belt in Six Sigma? Where do you want to go next with it?





snoodog  ·  2746 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Blackbootz : you are correct in your initial assessment of Lean. In theory it's exactly like ButterflyEffect describes it. In practice it works nothing like the theory. Lean suffers badly from bad data and bad incentives. It fails to account for people naturally wanting to cheat and cut corners thereby requiring the non value added steps it so boldly try's to eliminate.

I liken lean and six sigma to being a corporate version of communism. It sounds great in theory but in practice it's poorly implemented and does not work well. Dispite that its proponents keep championing it as a magic bullet saying that all failures are a result of improper understanding of lean and all successes being a direct result. As a concequnce lean and six sigma are much like corporate versions of religion where the successful are true believers and the failed are heathans.

If you want to know what lean truly looks like and not the theory that you read in text books and promo videos, stop by the cactus moon bar on a Friday after 3pm and ask some Boeing mechanics. You will get some awesome stories of spectacularly expensive failures.

ButterflyEffect  ·  2746 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Lean suffers badly from bad data and bad incentives. It fails to account for people naturally wanting to cheat and cut corners thereby requiring the non value added steps it so boldly try's to eliminate.

I'd agree with both of these things but faulty data...that's prevalent everywhere. Research, government studies, manufacturing, that's not necessarily a shortcoming of Lean so much as a shortcoming of a person's ability to ensure data quality, which is arguably the harder part of the equation. As for human behavior, that's a tricky one. Plus, it's near-impossible to ensure consistency across people doing the same exact thing. Which is frustrating, however, I do think it can be successfully implemented if data quality and the inclusion of operators and such into it's implementation are accounted for. It shouldn't just be a tool of the engineer or equivalent.

blackbootz  ·  2746 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Haha, is the Cactus Moon a bar by the factory? Where is the main Boeing factory?

It sounds like, according to you, that lean Six Sigma and communism make faulty assumptions about human behavior and motivation. Where did you gain such insight/experience of lean Six Sigma?

ButterflyEffect  ·  2746 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Fuckin' Jack Welch. I like this (and just about only this) about the guy:

    Regarding shareholder value, Welch said in a Financial Times interview on the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy...your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products".[51]

Anyway. It is, it's also useful for things like process scale-up, new process implementations and qualifications, and highly repeatable processes.

I'm hoping to use this as a stepping stone to get a Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma, and leveraging that in to a full-time position that can take in a more holistic business function beyond working in one factory. I'd like to work on process improvements across an entire business, across departments, and improve process capabilities while reducing waste. It's a decent way to feel okay about working in an industrial setting. If, somehow, I could get in to a more R&D oriented position which uses these principles that would be great too.