[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

I think that is one of the flaws that came along when we adapted the Japanese ideas of manufacturing and engineering. That single idea of "elimination of unnecessary" combined with "if it ain't broke don't fix it" certainly destroys any infrastructure upgrade proposals.

One thing though, it seems that Japanese companies don't really understand technology. I worked for a couple and they are still using dated POS systems and analog switching for their machines. The latter is the main cause of man-hours lost when a part jammed, you have to reset the entire fucking switchboard AGAIN.

I don't know, I'd say it depends on the company. For instance Toyota is fairly high tech, and it would also be rare with Toyota for the same factory error to occur twice (they put large stock in the 5 whys procedure). My bet would be that the Japanese companies that do have a high understanding of technology are probably doing most of their Asian work in Japan, as they've invested a lot in training up a high quality workforce, which is difficult to duplicate if they outsource.

I agree, as a technician. But the Engineer I am under doesn't get it easy - a proposal I made had to be trashed because he made the same proposal 1 year ago, and it is not yet implemented.

Would have went back to being an insurance agent if it was alot more interesting. Money is good, but the job is boring and there is way too much liability held.

I think for internal company dynamics it probably varies from company to company. If we talk about the wider population, though, "Engineer" is a respected profession, while most people will think a technician is little better then their mechanic (and of course, mechanics are under respected too...). Of course, most people don't understand Engineering anyway, because most people will never meet an engineer in their day to day lives (unlike a doctor, lawyer or banker).

Actually I would say it is good for the economy because of the money creation process, it puts money in the hands of those who knew how to run these systems themselves instead of pointing fingers at others to run it for them.

And who are these people who knew? Engineers who were hired to program and work the system.

I don't know, I think those engineering grads would be more productive actually designing and making stuff. And as financial services become more and more profitable, more money will go towards them, rather then actual "productive" parts of society.

Also, I think Engineers might be a poor choice to program financial systems, as unlike normal "mechanical risk", "financial risk" cannot be directly mathematically modelled. Mechanical faults can be predicted with a degree of mathematical certainty, but financial faults cannot (if they could be, the financial crisis would never have happened). Banking needs to be more about due diligence, and the likelihoods for a default are often down to difficult to quantify human factors. Their mathematical work gave them a false sense of confidence.

And being in a company that adopts the Japanese standards of hierachy makes it worse. The "seniors" are direct entry morons with less than 1 year experience - when shit hits the fan, they are completely clueless : only the sandwich bread knows what is going on and what is required, then due to the lack of knowledge and lingo, communication breaks down in transit from top to bottom.

I think you know the rest.

Something to remember is that Japanese =/= Lean. For instance, a typically "lean" company like Toyota has no strict hierarchy. At a company like Toyota there is only a handful of job titles, and jobs aren't given out based on seniority (so every factory function is done by everyone regardless of how recently they joined the company). The foundation of Toyota's success is in the process of "Continuous improvement", whereby every worker in the company is expected to be on the look out for new ways to improve the industrial process, and the management/engineers did their best to implement that improvement. A strict hierarchy where the opinion of the people at the top overrides those at the bottom would destroy the efficacy of that process.

What you're describing sounds a lot more like how American plants were (and often still are) run, where the guys on the bottom didn't really have any say in how things were run, and were just expected to obey (as they were too "stupid" to do anything else).