GM canned 15 people fort the ignition switch scandal. How many people has the VA canned?
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Words of the Weasel, Part 37
"It's under investigation and I have to wait until the investigation is complete before I can comment."
"It's under litigation, so I cannot say any thing."
"It's in the hands of the prosecutors, so I cannot say anything about it".
"We need to wait for all the facts to come in before reaching a conclusion."
All fair sounding ways of saying "No comment."
"It's under litigation, so I cannot say any thing."
"It's in the hands of the prosecutors, so I cannot say anything about it".
"We need to wait for all the facts to come in before reaching a conclusion."
All fair sounding ways of saying "No comment."
Saturday, June 7, 2014
ISO 9000 and the future of GM
ISO 9000 is an international standard for manufacturing excellence. It's world wide. More and more customers are demanding their suppliers be certified as ISO 9000 compliant. Twice I was involved in pushing the company into compliance with ISO-9000. Quite a push, each time. It's gotten so widespread that I saw a lumber mill in far northern Ontario sporting an ISO 9000 banner on it's front lawn. At this point, if you are a manufacturer, and you want your customers the think you make good stuff, rather than junk, you get yourself ISO 9000 certified.
So what are we talking about here? At bottom it's pretty simple. There is only one way to make the product right. There are thousands of ways of making it wrong. Your production line workforce are willing, but they aren't experienced craftsmen or technicians, they don't understand the product very well. If you carefully explain to each line worker what he must do to make the product right, and give him written instructions, from which he must never deviate, then that line will turn out a consistent, probably a good, product. The foremen must know all the procedures, and make sure the line workers comply with them. When so-and-so doesn't show up for work, the foreman has to grab somebody else and get him doing so-and-so's job to keep production running. For this to work right, the written job instructions have to be readily available, and written in plain English, not techno-geek gibberish.
One of the important jobs is incoming inspection. At a minimum the inspector must verify that what was shipped is the same as what was billed for. No short weight, no wrong part number. In a lot of cases, the incoming parts are tested to make sure they work, meet spec, will fit. If incoming accepts something that isn't right, the production line will put that part into the product. Ignition switches for example.
To get certified, the company hires an agency, which sends an inspection team to walk their production line, see that the workers know what they are doing, that written instructions are readily available, and that the workers are following those instructions. They ask questions, like "What do you do if a part doesn't meet spec?" The correct answer, the answer that gets the company certified, is "We reject the shipment and send it back."
Now let's take a look at GM, old Government Motors. We have the new GM CEO, a thirty year veteran in the company engineering department. She says "Just because the part doesn't meet spec doesn't mean it isn't acceptable." In front of a Congressional committee no less. This is the CEO saying this. If the top person doesn't think compliance with written procedures is important, does anyone at GM do things by the book? What happens on GM production lines with that kind of corporate culture. Especially on graveyard shift? As I think about that one, buying a Ford begins to make a lot of sense to me.
GM may have canned 15 people over the ignition switch disaster, but does anyone think that is enough to get the word around?
So what are we talking about here? At bottom it's pretty simple. There is only one way to make the product right. There are thousands of ways of making it wrong. Your production line workforce are willing, but they aren't experienced craftsmen or technicians, they don't understand the product very well. If you carefully explain to each line worker what he must do to make the product right, and give him written instructions, from which he must never deviate, then that line will turn out a consistent, probably a good, product. The foremen must know all the procedures, and make sure the line workers comply with them. When so-and-so doesn't show up for work, the foreman has to grab somebody else and get him doing so-and-so's job to keep production running. For this to work right, the written job instructions have to be readily available, and written in plain English, not techno-geek gibberish.
One of the important jobs is incoming inspection. At a minimum the inspector must verify that what was shipped is the same as what was billed for. No short weight, no wrong part number. In a lot of cases, the incoming parts are tested to make sure they work, meet spec, will fit. If incoming accepts something that isn't right, the production line will put that part into the product. Ignition switches for example.
To get certified, the company hires an agency, which sends an inspection team to walk their production line, see that the workers know what they are doing, that written instructions are readily available, and that the workers are following those instructions. They ask questions, like "What do you do if a part doesn't meet spec?" The correct answer, the answer that gets the company certified, is "We reject the shipment and send it back."
Now let's take a look at GM, old Government Motors. We have the new GM CEO, a thirty year veteran in the company engineering department. She says "Just because the part doesn't meet spec doesn't mean it isn't acceptable." In front of a Congressional committee no less. This is the CEO saying this. If the top person doesn't think compliance with written procedures is important, does anyone at GM do things by the book? What happens on GM production lines with that kind of corporate culture. Especially on graveyard shift? As I think about that one, buying a Ford begins to make a lot of sense to me.
GM may have canned 15 people over the ignition switch disaster, but does anyone think that is enough to get the word around?
Newsies versus nouns
And the nouns are losing.
Was listening to a lengthy piece on NPR the other day. Only toward the very end of the piece did I figure out the newsie must be talking about Ronald Reagan. I often miss the first words of a radio/TV piece, 'cause it takes my built in commercial ignoring ear a few seconds to unmute. The newsie spoke the rest of the entire piece using he, the president, and, then, and similar pronouns and connective words. The piece would have been better had the newsie started more sentences with the subject's name, in this case Ronald Reagan.
This is not uncommon. I listen thru a lot of pieces wondering where it happened, when it happened, who did it, why they did it, and what happened. The classic newman's questions, left totally unanswered.
What do they teach in "journalism" schools?
Was listening to a lengthy piece on NPR the other day. Only toward the very end of the piece did I figure out the newsie must be talking about Ronald Reagan. I often miss the first words of a radio/TV piece, 'cause it takes my built in commercial ignoring ear a few seconds to unmute. The newsie spoke the rest of the entire piece using he, the president, and, then, and similar pronouns and connective words. The piece would have been better had the newsie started more sentences with the subject's name, in this case Ronald Reagan.
This is not uncommon. I listen thru a lot of pieces wondering where it happened, when it happened, who did it, why they did it, and what happened. The classic newman's questions, left totally unanswered.
What do they teach in "journalism" schools?
Friday, June 6, 2014
Alexander, an Oliver Stone movie
It's been out a while, actually since 2005. I missed seeing it in the theaters, so when I ran across it on Netflix I clicked on it. It came in yesterday.
It's long. So long it needs two DVD discs to hold it. Runs nearly four hours, which is ridiculous for a movie. It's got Oliver Stone directing it. Apparently Stone didn't find any undug dirt on a guy who died 2500 years ago. The movie follows generally accepted history, mostly. It had a decent budget. Sets and costumes and thousands of extras. Palaces in Macedon and Babylon, massive armies. Mediocre score, it's there, it's music, but it ain't John Williams and nobody is going to buy a CD of it. Curse of the soundman was laid on this flick too. Dialog is very hard to hear, the actors mumble, the score is played over the dialog. Excellent camera work. Lots of really nice shots, a young Alexander galloping about on Bucephalus, battle scenes that go on forever, interpersonal confrontations that result in a lot of bad words, but no resolution, except occasionally Alexander looses his temper and slays an old friend at the banquet table. The flick would have been better if a lot of the glorious camera work had been cut down, a lot.
There are some offputting details. The helmets everyone wears don't look very Greek to my eye. Lots of one eyed men, but no black eyepatches, every one eyed man just squints the bad eye shut. A lot of blood. Everyone comes out of each battle covered in blood from head to toe. Never any scenes of washing the blood off after battle. The Greek soldiers (hoplites) don't form a phalanx, three ranks deep, instead they are formed up in blocks a dozen ranks deep. That deep, the rear ranks cannot reach the enemy with their spears. Battle scenes are just a lot of hacking and chopping. We never see how the hoplites use spears, shields, armor, and discipline to defeat ten times their number of Persians.
The movie is unsatisfying. We, the audience, want to see what makes Alexander tick. Here is a guy, still a house hold name today, cities he personally founded still doing business, conqueror of the entire known world, good looking dude too. We want to understand why and how he pulled all this stuff off. Oliver never bothers to tell us. He shows us Alexander's creepy mother (Angelina Jolie) who keeps pet snakes around the house and keeps telling the boy Alexander that he is a god. We see the father beating upon the boy for not being tough enough. We never learn just how Alexander feels about all this. A key scene, the death of his father, and a teen aged Alexander managing to snag the crown of Macedon against a bunch of other tough older bastards is done in flashback. We never do learn just who really offed Philip, was it Alexander, Alexander's mother, or the Persians? Alexander's later sex life is complex, he marries a cute but fierce Persian princess, Roxane, and he has a boy friend. When the boyfriend finally dies of a fever, Alexander chews out Roxanne for it. The one time Alexander speaks of his ambitions, he talks like he just wants to be a tourist, (tourist with an army, but just a tourist). He speaks longingly of wanting to see the Pillars of Hercules, the northern forests, Rome, Britain. This doesn't answer the question of how and why he dragged his entire army into India after the conquest of Persia. Alexander's blond hair grows longer and longer as the movie goes on, his complexion worsens, and his shaving deteriorates, suggesting that he is loosing his grip, but somehow he presses on, keeps the troops with him, and makes it back to Babylon, in time to catch a fever and die.
All and all a colorful swords and sandals epic that doesn't come to grips with the issues we the audience want addressed.
It's long. So long it needs two DVD discs to hold it. Runs nearly four hours, which is ridiculous for a movie. It's got Oliver Stone directing it. Apparently Stone didn't find any undug dirt on a guy who died 2500 years ago. The movie follows generally accepted history, mostly. It had a decent budget. Sets and costumes and thousands of extras. Palaces in Macedon and Babylon, massive armies. Mediocre score, it's there, it's music, but it ain't John Williams and nobody is going to buy a CD of it. Curse of the soundman was laid on this flick too. Dialog is very hard to hear, the actors mumble, the score is played over the dialog. Excellent camera work. Lots of really nice shots, a young Alexander galloping about on Bucephalus, battle scenes that go on forever, interpersonal confrontations that result in a lot of bad words, but no resolution, except occasionally Alexander looses his temper and slays an old friend at the banquet table. The flick would have been better if a lot of the glorious camera work had been cut down, a lot.
There are some offputting details. The helmets everyone wears don't look very Greek to my eye. Lots of one eyed men, but no black eyepatches, every one eyed man just squints the bad eye shut. A lot of blood. Everyone comes out of each battle covered in blood from head to toe. Never any scenes of washing the blood off after battle. The Greek soldiers (hoplites) don't form a phalanx, three ranks deep, instead they are formed up in blocks a dozen ranks deep. That deep, the rear ranks cannot reach the enemy with their spears. Battle scenes are just a lot of hacking and chopping. We never see how the hoplites use spears, shields, armor, and discipline to defeat ten times their number of Persians.
The movie is unsatisfying. We, the audience, want to see what makes Alexander tick. Here is a guy, still a house hold name today, cities he personally founded still doing business, conqueror of the entire known world, good looking dude too. We want to understand why and how he pulled all this stuff off. Oliver never bothers to tell us. He shows us Alexander's creepy mother (Angelina Jolie) who keeps pet snakes around the house and keeps telling the boy Alexander that he is a god. We see the father beating upon the boy for not being tough enough. We never learn just how Alexander feels about all this. A key scene, the death of his father, and a teen aged Alexander managing to snag the crown of Macedon against a bunch of other tough older bastards is done in flashback. We never do learn just who really offed Philip, was it Alexander, Alexander's mother, or the Persians? Alexander's later sex life is complex, he marries a cute but fierce Persian princess, Roxane, and he has a boy friend. When the boyfriend finally dies of a fever, Alexander chews out Roxanne for it. The one time Alexander speaks of his ambitions, he talks like he just wants to be a tourist, (tourist with an army, but just a tourist). He speaks longingly of wanting to see the Pillars of Hercules, the northern forests, Rome, Britain. This doesn't answer the question of how and why he dragged his entire army into India after the conquest of Persia. Alexander's blond hair grows longer and longer as the movie goes on, his complexion worsens, and his shaving deteriorates, suggesting that he is loosing his grip, but somehow he presses on, keeps the troops with him, and makes it back to Babylon, in time to catch a fever and die.
All and all a colorful swords and sandals epic that doesn't come to grips with the issues we the audience want addressed.
D-Day
For those who don't remember, it was 70 years ago today. A crucial battle in WWII. The Anglo Americans loaded a huge army onto landing craft, motored across the English channel, and seized a defended beachhead and held it against Nazi counter attack. This victory doubled the Nazi military problem. It placed the Anglo American army on Germany's west side while the Red army was pounding on the east side.
D-Day could have failed. Had the weather worsened, had the Germans deployed their forces better, had a number of other things gone wrong, the invasion force might have been thrown back into the sea. Eisenhower was sufficiently worried to pen a press release accepting full responsibility in the event of defeat. He never released it, but it shows he, the supreme commander with the best grasp of the situation, had his doubts.
If D-day had failed, it would have been a year or more before the losses could have been made good and the invasion tried again. If the delay had run on past August 1945, we would have nuked Berlin instead of Hiroshima. Or the Russians would have cracked open the eastern front and invaded Germany pretty much single handed. By this time in the war, Russian industry was up to speed and turning out weapons as good as the German's and in vastly larger quantities. The Russians had a much larger and highly dedicated population to furnish soldiers to the front. Had this happened, the cold war Iron Curtain would have started in Holland, instead of Eastern Germany.
D-Day could have failed. Had the weather worsened, had the Germans deployed their forces better, had a number of other things gone wrong, the invasion force might have been thrown back into the sea. Eisenhower was sufficiently worried to pen a press release accepting full responsibility in the event of defeat. He never released it, but it shows he, the supreme commander with the best grasp of the situation, had his doubts.
If D-day had failed, it would have been a year or more before the losses could have been made good and the invasion tried again. If the delay had run on past August 1945, we would have nuked Berlin instead of Hiroshima. Or the Russians would have cracked open the eastern front and invaded Germany pretty much single handed. By this time in the war, Russian industry was up to speed and turning out weapons as good as the German's and in vastly larger quantities. The Russians had a much larger and highly dedicated population to furnish soldiers to the front. Had this happened, the cold war Iron Curtain would have started in Holland, instead of Eastern Germany.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
I've been working on the railroad
All the live long day. Well, not really, at least not in 1:1 scale. You might have noticed the number of train wrecks involving tank cars of crude oil, resulting in massive fires, death, and property damage. How come so many? Well, the crude oil wrecks have been increasing because a lot more crude is going by rail because US and Canadian oil production is ramping up and Obama is sitting on the Keystone XL pipeline.
Some accident are just plain gross negligence. The bad accident in Quebec happened because the single crewman on the train pulled it into a siding and failed to set the hand brakes before going off to a motel to catch some crew rest. It was winter, and nobody ever shuts down a diesel in winter, lest it never start again. So the train, nobody aboard, engine left running, and no brakes set, rolled slowly off the siding, gathered speed on the downgrade, headed into town, derailed and caught fire. I forget how many people got killed in that one. Burned down every building in town that one did.
But a lot of accidents come from old worn track that derails the passing train. Down at White River Junction, on a line used by Amtrak's Montrealer, the wooden ties are so rotten I can pick spikes out of the ties with just my fingers. That bit of track has a slow order (35 mph) on it, but I used to worry as I packed youngest son onto the train for the seven hour crawl down to college in New York City.
Betcha there is plenty more track like that carrying unit trains of crude oil. It's only a matter of time before another one derails.
What to do? The railroad insurance companies ought to bear down on the railroads with higher premiums on every mile of substandard track. That might work, if railroad companies actually depend upon insurance for liability protection. They may not, many railroads are large enough to self insure.
In that case we have work for the million lawyers hanging around suing drug companies and chasing ambulances. They ought to get with it, and organize a suit against the railroad every time a train derails. For plaintiffs you have the union railroad workers endangered in the accident, the landowners endangered by petroleum fires, the fish and game departments enraged by water pollution. It shouldn't be hard to arrange for sympathetic press coverage.
Along these lines, there ought to be nationally recognized written standard for acceptable track. Something a plaintiff's lawyer can wave in front of a jury, and quote chapter and verse about how the track at the accident site did not meet standard. We need something with the kind of authority that Underwriter's Labs carries.
Next time someone cries for more infrastructure spending, suggest that some accident prone track get relaid. Best of all, track maintenance is a private sector job. If the courts make derailments expensive enough, the railroads will get the message and spend the money to replace over age track.
Some accident are just plain gross negligence. The bad accident in Quebec happened because the single crewman on the train pulled it into a siding and failed to set the hand brakes before going off to a motel to catch some crew rest. It was winter, and nobody ever shuts down a diesel in winter, lest it never start again. So the train, nobody aboard, engine left running, and no brakes set, rolled slowly off the siding, gathered speed on the downgrade, headed into town, derailed and caught fire. I forget how many people got killed in that one. Burned down every building in town that one did.
But a lot of accidents come from old worn track that derails the passing train. Down at White River Junction, on a line used by Amtrak's Montrealer, the wooden ties are so rotten I can pick spikes out of the ties with just my fingers. That bit of track has a slow order (35 mph) on it, but I used to worry as I packed youngest son onto the train for the seven hour crawl down to college in New York City.
Betcha there is plenty more track like that carrying unit trains of crude oil. It's only a matter of time before another one derails.
What to do? The railroad insurance companies ought to bear down on the railroads with higher premiums on every mile of substandard track. That might work, if railroad companies actually depend upon insurance for liability protection. They may not, many railroads are large enough to self insure.
In that case we have work for the million lawyers hanging around suing drug companies and chasing ambulances. They ought to get with it, and organize a suit against the railroad every time a train derails. For plaintiffs you have the union railroad workers endangered in the accident, the landowners endangered by petroleum fires, the fish and game departments enraged by water pollution. It shouldn't be hard to arrange for sympathetic press coverage.
Along these lines, there ought to be nationally recognized written standard for acceptable track. Something a plaintiff's lawyer can wave in front of a jury, and quote chapter and verse about how the track at the accident site did not meet standard. We need something with the kind of authority that Underwriter's Labs carries.
Next time someone cries for more infrastructure spending, suggest that some accident prone track get relaid. Best of all, track maintenance is a private sector job. If the courts make derailments expensive enough, the railroads will get the message and spend the money to replace over age track.
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