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The Secret Engineer
Our anonymous blogger casts his (or her) eye over the day-to-day issues that face engineers in the office and on the shop floor, where she (or he) plies his (or her) trade
What's happened to common sense in the workplace?
Here at Amalgamated Products Limited we take our work very seriously and, as such, constantly look for ways to improve ourselves and our products. The latest voyage into the realms of greater efficiency is through the adoption of a methodology which, for the sake of this column, I shall call ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’.
While engineering seems to be the natural home for this, and is taking the lead in its implementation, the ethos could be rolled out across the company, making the overall potential benefits quite significant. Whether this happens remains to be seen but for now we are buoyed by the fresh enthusiasm of a new and optimistic future.
Today, I had my introductory course in the Seven Pillars and the thing that struck me most is that it all seems rather sensible and straightforward. By this, I mean there was no huge revelation or even any counter-intuitive ideas to be grappled with.
However, I was rather struck with something while our evangelistic tutor was holding forth. Unlike my school days it was not the board rubber flung by an exasperated teacher as I sat looking out of the window and daydreaming. No, it was that the Seven Pillars are Japanese in their origin, which was particularly significant in that so too were the other widely adopted work management techniques he referenced. Equally all of them shared the characteristic of being the formalisation of ‘common sense’ resource (in its widest sense) management.
This rather leads one to ponder: why aren’t we doing it anyway? It could be something to do with our innate mindset. For myself I am rather thankful that the homogenisation of the planet has yet to remove the subtleties of divergence between differing cultures. I don’t think this results in any one view being better but, rather, that different views can bring forward benefits for all.
Even so, I cannot believe that European companies never worked in some way to the Seven Pillars formula, perhaps only as the application of knowledge hard won by some hoary-handed son of the lathe. If this knowledge is correct, how did we lose it? For instance, was it through the increased influence of professional managers and non-engineering departments?
Is it only the Japanese who can stand back and see these new techniques?
Perhaps, looking to the longer term, it is the nature of an industry to grow ever more sophisticated; building established practice upon established practice until eventually the simplest of underpinning concepts are lost - an ungainly series of adopted processes that can only be cured by ‘resetting’ and starting afresh.
Surely the only important question is: ‘Is it only the Japanese who can stand back and see these things?’ The advantage British companies would have if they could originate and implement one of these new techniques first is obvious. I cannot help but wonder if we have academics actively seeking to provide this edge, or must we always follow what others are already doing? Then again, perhaps they are too busy practising their board-rubber throwing technique.
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Readers' comments (13)
Paul Reeves | 15 Jun 2012 1:23 pm
Why is the Blogger 'Secret'? Epecially when what they say in this case at least is so mundaine?
As far as Common Sense is concerned - surely it is the enemy of ambition & true innovation.
"Stick a steam engine on wheels and run it along a track - don't be daft it'll suck all the air out of our lungs, use yer common sense!"
re the Japanese - miracle and all of those management technigues - continuous improvement etc - didn't it all start with W Edward Deming (an American) after WWII - who was simply helping to get the Japanese economy restarted - to help get the world economy restarted as well? I think it's been mystified to appear 'cultural' - by all those rubbish managers (some engineers, some not) back in the 70s who were too dim (and probably using their 70s version of common sense!)
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Editor's comments | 15 Jun 2012 1:23 pm
The Secret Engineer blog is a chance to hear views on engineering from the shop floor and stir up debate on topics affecting life in the workplace. By remaining anonymous, he or she can at times say things they might otherwise not disclose for fear of offending colleagues, management or hurting the reputation of their employer. Just like many of the commenters here on the The Engineer website choose to remain anonymous.
Anonymous | 15 Jun 2012 1:27 pm
To answer your question in a word.
"ego"
To unpack - engineering common sense is aimed at efficiency, not aggrandisement. Co-operation within an organisation is more efficient than competition.
Ego-centric (competitive) cultures therefore do not aspire to system efficiency except as a means to an end (personal profit.) As a result, in egocentric cultures, engineering common sense has to be sold to stakeholders as a way to improve the bottom line. It has no intrinsic value.
However, if profitability were seen as one of a variety of measures of corporate efficiency rather than their sole aspiration, engineers would be in higher demand as managers, and common sense would be more highly valued and more commonly applied.
As a result, non-egocentric cultures (such as Japan) will always outperform egocentric ones (such as the UK) in the application of engineering common sense to corporate behaviour.
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Anonymous | 15 Jun 2012 1:55 pm
This attitude is not confined to management and all the other trick cycling that pretends to run our companies. I see it all over the place in a reluctance to back anything fom a domestic source.
I work in the UK water industry, and UK invented modern public health engineering, but in my working life we have become ever more reluctant to use British engineering originality, preferring to buy foreign output.
All you have to tell many of our clients is that the item on offer comes from Germany and all challenge melts away. It is no longer worryingly "experimental" (however standard it is actually), because it is "German".
So too with management ideas, but Japan is even more exotic than Germany and therefore even more valid!
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JohnK | 15 Jun 2012 3:25 pm
The "Peter principle" is alive and well in the UK (& the US) thus preventing higher salaries being paid to the most productive, and not just to the most senior.
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Anonymous | 15 Jun 2012 4:10 pm
Common sense is often anything but common!
Why do we in UK have to over complicate things? In my experience, the difficult challenge is to make everything as simple as possible thus allowing everyone to contribute.
We have adapted ideas from many sources (other companies, cultures, books, etc) to suit our needs - on a lean journey, why not steal with pride? No-one has a monopoly on good ideas, and surely everyone benefits from improvements.
The key is the development of the correct culture to make the maximum gain from the changes and improvements!
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phil | 15 Jun 2012 9:15 pm
Stick a steam engine on wheels and run it along a track - don't be daft it'll suck all the air out of our lungs, use yer common sense!"
This was not the opinion of common sense, or, as I believe was being insinuated the common people, this was actually the opinion of informed "scientists" including one Dionysious Lardner (qv) If you need to improve productivity, innovation or enterpreneurship, ask those who do it! The Titanic was hand built by extraordinary people who built ships, it sank because management ordered the cheaper rivets!
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Chris Brasted | 19 Jun 2012 10:59 pm
@Paul Reeves | 15 Jun 2012 1:23 pm
Identifies one of the originators of Japanese quality systems; Juran was another such. The US sent interested and curious statisticians to help rebuild the shattered Japanese economy. Their ideas were well developed, but ill-received in their home country. Whilst these people introduced sound methods to reduce variation and improve production efficiencies, Deming also came up with his 14 principles of management, which I'll refrain from pasting in, but recommend the Wikipedia entry as being a fairly straight take:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
The point here is that even at that stage, the demands on managers and on company culture for quality manufacturing are quite at odds with the cultural and social imperatives in the US and UK. They still are. Engineering and quality manufacturing are pretty close to being consistently rational activities, whereas, people are rationalising rather than rational creatures. So what looks like common sense to an engineer is subsumed by the greater irrationality and will continue to be so until circumstances are so pressing that rational behaviour is enforced as a matter of survival.
It would be interesting to learn why Amalgamated Products Ltd is adopting this methodology. Often Lean or TQM are adopted as a bolt-on 'initiatives' to get a bit more "efficiency", and in fact, the author says it is in a drive for greater efficiency. I'd be surprised if production efficiency is a major strategic objective for the company, and would be quite unsurprised if it was viewed as an opportunity for reducing costs. Basically, it's like doing ISO9000: if you're not interested in your processes, then it's just going to be a burden. If you are interested, then it can make a big, positive difference.
So, to address some of the points raised by others below the line; what a lot of management-bashing! If engineers and managers can't work in a fair degree of harmony, then you don't have much of an enterprise. Perhaps we're thinking of the governance structures of our companies (boards, directors and so forth) which have historically been disinterested in the businesses, stripped assets, junked good projects.
Regards to all.
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Anonymous | 21 Jun 2012 12:57 pm
I always think if we spent less time talking of rubbish and got on with doing our work, then we may one day regain the Great prefix to Britain
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Anonymous | 21 Jun 2012 8:49 pm
It's not common sense we need, it's rare sense.
Common sense has got us nowhere.
I'm a great supporter of W Edwards Deming. He got it right. Poor management is the cause of all problems.
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Andy Gizara | 23 Jun 2012 6:50 pm
One substantial difference between east and west corporate cultures, in general, is that, in order to lead a technology based team or entire company for that matter, one must be the best technologist - at least one post-secondary degree in a STEM program, not merely a "soft scientist" in the east, in the west, one would think this would be accepted as common sense. When bureaucrats are hired to run private enterprise is it any wonder these enterprises are as successful and efficient as government?
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