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I worked at a distribution center for a large electronics retailer for 4+ years. It was my experience that a lot of those guys slinging boxes either didn't care

I worked at a distribution center for a large electronics retailer for 4+ years. It was my experience that a lot of those guys slinging boxes either didn't care, or just didn't have time to care. To the person who's been saving up for that $1200 4K TV, it's a big deal and having it come in damaged is incredibly frustrating and disappointing. To the guy loading his 3rd 58' trailer of his 10 hour shift in the middle of August - maybe not so much. You'd like to think your package is handled with the same care and pride that you would give it, but that's not the reality. Quotas, deadlines, bottom lines and the human condition just won't allow it.

dvirsky 10y ago
> Quotas, deadlines, bottom lines I guess companies can in some cases track damages backwards and add these to the quotas and bottom lines. When I was 18 I worked for a few months on the assembly line at a Motorola manufacturing plant, assembling radio communication devices. It was a shit job with minimum wage and we had to meet strict quotas, but assembly errors were also counted, (the goal was "six sigma", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma). Once defects were a priority as well, and they were tracked to a specific person (by means of a sticker on each assembly stage), people started to care. BTW the only cool thing about it was that the company REALLY cared about improving efficiency and reducing errors, and anyone who would come up with an improvement to any process, would get a reward, that could be a lot of money in extreme cases. I suggested a very basic "hack" that saved the company $100 a month or so, and got a small gift and a certificate of excellence or some bullshit.
- john_reel 10y ago
  What was your hack?
  - dvirsky 10y ago
    It was really stupid. There were these LED 2-digit panels (something like this: http://bit.ly/2d9fa3a http://bit.ly/2d9fa3a) that my job was to screw into the case. Anyway, the connector cables were manually soldered to them at a nearby station, and the ladies who did the soldering used to just pile the LED panels in a box, and as a result some of them would get scratches on the visible part and had to be thrown away. At the same time, the speakers I would also screw-in, came in these grid-like trays, where each speaker was placed in a small rectangular cell. My brilliant idea was to recycle these cardboard trays and have the solderers place the finished circuits in them, so they'd never damage each other. It saved 10-20 defected panels a month IIRC. Not enough to get me bonus, but enough to get me a cheap FM radio and a certificate. A guy who worked there at the time optimized some circuit board printing procedure and saved the company IIRC like $100K a year (or was it a month?), and got a very big bonus.

dvirsky 10y ago

> Quotas, deadlines, bottom lines I guess companies can in some cases track damages backwards and add these to the quotas and bottom lines. When I was 18 I worked for a few months on the assembly line at a Motorola manufacturing plant, assembling radio communication devices. It was a shit job with minimum wage and we had to meet strict quotas, but assembly errors were also counted, (the goal was "six sigma", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma). Once defects were a priority as well, and they were tracked to a specific person (by means of a sticker on each assembly stage), people started to care. BTW the only cool thing about it was that the company REALLY cared about improving efficiency and reducing errors, and anyone who would come up with an improvement to any process, would get a reward, that could be a lot of money in extreme cases. I suggested a very basic "hack" that saved the company $100 a month or so, and got a small gift and a certificate of excellence or some bullshit.

john_reel 10y ago
What was your hack?
- dvirsky 10y ago
  It was really stupid. There were these LED 2-digit panels (something like this: http://bit.ly/2d9fa3a http://bit.ly/2d9fa3a) that my job was to screw into the case. Anyway, the connector cables were manually soldered to them at a nearby station, and the ladies who did the soldering used to just pile the LED panels in a box, and as a result some of them would get scratches on the visible part and had to be thrown away. At the same time, the speakers I would also screw-in, came in these grid-like trays, where each speaker was placed in a small rectangular cell. My brilliant idea was to recycle these cardboard trays and have the solderers place the finished circuits in them, so they'd never damage each other. It saved 10-20 defected panels a month IIRC. Not enough to get me bonus, but enough to get me a cheap FM radio and a certificate. A guy who worked there at the time optimized some circuit board printing procedure and saved the company IIRC like $100K a year (or was it a month?), and got a very big bonus.