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> The team had a quota of 420 dashboard frames per shift but seldom made more than 350 For me, one of the most thought-provoking expressions of the perspective

> The team had a quota of 420 dashboard frames per shift but seldom made more than 350 For me, one of the most thought-provoking expressions of the perspective of the factory worker came from the Studs Terkel book, Working, where he interviewed a factory worker and UAW local president named Gary Bryner in the early 1970s or late 1960s. Bryner: "In that little book of quotes I have: 'The workingman has but one thing to sell, his labor. Once he loses control of that, he loses everything.'" ... "They use time, stopwatches. They say ... We know it takes so many seconds to shoot a screw. We know the gun turns so fast, the screw's so long, the hole's so deep. Our argument has always been: That's mechanical; that's not human." "The workers said, We perspire, we sweat, we have hangovers, we have upset stomachs, we have feelings and emotions, and we're not about to be placed in a category of a machine. When you talk about that watch, you talk about it for a minute. We talk about a lifetime. We're gonna do what's normal and we're gonna tell you what's normal. We'll negotiate from there. ..." "If the guys didn't stand up and fight, they'd become robots too. They're interested in being able to smoke a cigarette, bullshit a little bit with the guy next to 'em, open a book, look at something, just daydream if nothing else. You can't do that if you become a machine. / Thirty-five, thirty-six seconds to do your job - that includes the walking, the picking up of the parts, the assembly. Go to the next job, with never a letup, never a second to stand and think. The guys at our plant fought like hell to keep that right." ... I'm not sure how much factory work is still like that, but imagine if that was your job today ... or for 8 hours per day, for the rest of your life.

martalist 10y ago
The article makes it sound very much like that, except 12 hours per day.
brudgers 10y ago
In modern manufacturing, a person would be lucky to hold the same job for ten years without being laid off or replaced. Many of these people work for staffing contractors who contract with tier 1, 2, or 3 suppliers and everything is just in time. Even when things are just in time, suppliers often start an assembly line, run it until their warehouse is full and then shut the line down to reduce expenses. In many parts of Alabama there is are millions of square feet of potential storage space in the form of obsolescent manufacturing facilities.
- dilemma 10y ago
  >Even when things are just in time, suppliers often start an assembly line, run it until their warehouse is full and then shut the line down to reduce expenses. JIT is part of lean. What you describe is short term mass production, not lean and also not JIT because it implies continuity.
  - brudgers 10y ago
    An auto-plant is probably just in time. As one steps down the tiers, 1,2,3 the more likely batch processing is because lower tier suppliers tend to supply multiple companies at higher tiers and it often makes more economic sense to set up and tear down production lines than to try to run them in parallel. Having an inventory also means that a hitch in production will incur contractual penalties under a JIT supply contract. The customer doesn't care when the shipping container was loaded with parts at the supplier's facility, just when it arrives at their loading dock.
jacquesm 10y ago
> I'm not sure how much factory work is still like that, but imagine if that was your job today ... or for 8 hours per day, for the rest of your life. Sweat shops in Asia time their employees to 100ths of seconds for their tasks. I wished I was kidding, the timesheets for garment manufacture look like top sports results.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  If it can be done in a productive and enjoyable way, that might not be bad. I am sure that's not how it is. If I had to work in sweatshop for whatever reason, it would make it suck just a little less if it were done in "events". For example get three people to have a race to build ten pairs of shoes. Take a breather, cheer on another group of employees, maybe a small prize for someone winning such a race. Have timed trials to build the fastest pair of shoes. Don't take away your employees freedom, encourage them to do what you want, presumably make shoes in this contrived example. If people come up with their own ways to do it fast and they want to do more of it, then just maybe it will actually happen faster. I think it works better with code. I like competing with my coworkers on optimizing things that pass our unit tests. We each try to optimize a given snippet of code in a unit test. Whichever is fastest and passes all the tests wins and gets committed. EDIT - I know its shitty in these sweat shops, clearly what I described wasn't happening. I figured phrasing like: > I am sure that's not how it is. and > it would make it suck just a little less No need to downvote a silly idea so aggressively. If someone needs to work in a sweat and if the person running it is decent they will try to make it not suck. That is why most sweatshops suck they aren't run by decent and this wouldn't work. Which is why I even contrasted it with software.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    This is not some kind of silly contest. Too slow by a little bit and you're out, also yesterdays 'peak' is tomorrows cut-off.
    - scythe 10y ago
      >yesterdays 'peak' is tomorrows cut-off Obviously such a rule could not be applied for more than a few days. Humans have physiological limits no matter how hard you twist the psychological ones! I am guessing it is somewhere in between. What may have started as a clever manager's way to motivate employees became another bureaucratic hoop for people to jump through.
walshemj 10y ago
True but anyone who's done any "traditional" production engineering courses knows that for piece work you slow down when the time and motion guy comes round. Let alone the Spanish practices my ex colleague who was from Red Clydside (makes Malcom Tucker look like a mummys boy) told me about "and the tea boy got a grand in a brown envelope"
lazulicurio 10y ago
I work at a manufacturing company in the Midwest and, to me, the confusing part is where the modern push to treat workers like machines is coming from. In school, we were taught how Taylor was the "father" of scientific management, but that his ideas had mostly been superseded by those of Deming, who was a huge contributor to the post-war manufacturing miracle in Japan. And yet, the management at my current company---and from what I gather, many others---is decidedly Taylorist. It's like a race to the bottom where the prize is... something? I'm honestly not sure.
- a3n 10y ago
  It's short term quarterly thinking. Get my review and bonuses and get out. If any manager thinks the company will be around, he doesn't really care. He's not in it to build a company or a legacy or pride, he's there to get his money and get out. Driving your workers as fast as possible maximizes your bonus. Who cares what happens in ten years?
  - jz87 10y ago
    Yeah if you read the article what you see is companies saving $7000 to avoid installing safety devices that ended up causing injuries that costed them multi-million dollar payouts in lawsuits. The thing is, the incentives to the executives making these decisions is skewed. If they avoid investing in safety equipment, they make their bonuses, which can add up as long as nothing too bad happens. Yet if there is a serious injury costing the company millions, the worst thing that can happen is they lose their jobs. For senior executives, the bonuses can be larger than their base salaries, so the upside is larger than the downside.
- thatfrenchguy 10y ago
  The prize is more money for the shareholders.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I think it's just easier to think that way and measure results. Empowering workers is more fuzzy and hard to measure.
cjslep 10y ago
This is exactly why I correct people from treating other people as "cogs in a machine" to treating them as "cells in a much larger organism".
hkmurakami 10y ago
I spent 3 months in a automobile parts factory in Japan as part of my new employee training. This was my job for 8 hours a day, less two 15 minute breaks and an hour lunch break. I started to develop this mind-body separation where I could do the manual labor while completely disengaging the mind towards some daydreaming, because the routine was so ingrained into my body that I no longer needed conscious brain power to move my hands and examine the visual elements of my tools and parts. Yes we were basically robots. At least the company genuinely cared about improving processes to prevent workplace injuries, even of the repeated stress category. While their jobs were not the most important part of these people's lives, it did enable them to provide well for their families and pay for their hobbies and pursuits (I think a blue collar job at a tier 1 Toyota group supplier pays better than a below average whitecollar job in Japan). And they seemed to have a sense of pride in their work.
gozur88 10y ago
I suspect most of that kind of stuff is automated now. Is that better? Those guys made good money for the type of work they were doing. Now they're working at Starbucks or faking a back injury for disability.
- mercer 10y ago
  Lots of work that could be automated still isn't. Furthermore, there are many jobs that are not technically factory work, but are essentially the same: dehumanizing, boring, conveyor-belt style work where you're treated like a robot. I did tons of those types of jobs growing up, my little sister does so currently, and I've met quite a few highly educated adults who are miserable being stuck in this kind of job. One good example would be the Amazon fulfillment center work, of which there are many articles online that paint a picture that I find horrifying. Another example that might not come to mind right away when you think 'factory work' is call centers. A friend of mine has a law degree but because she couldn't find work she ended up at a call center. While the work is less physically taxing, it's in some ways worse than a lot of factory work. She can't go on auto-pilot because she's talking to people, but at the same time she's forced to approach it as dumb factory work. Just complicated enough that you can't tune out, but boring enough that it gives no satisfaction. Aside from high quotas, they track bathroom breaks and if she crosses some (equally unreasonable) threshold a manager will have a 'friendly chat' about it. Aside from the fact that I've never met anyone who makes 'good money' doing this type of work, I personally don't blame anyone who does this long enough to eventually fake a disability or something. In fact, I'll happily keep paying high taxes if it supports that kind of 'disability'. No human should be forced to do that kind of stuff in this day and age, least of all in a developed nation. That said, I think the 'faking disability to avoid factory work' type of person is mostly conjured up in support of particular political views. I'm just saying I'd not even be mad if it were the case.
  - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
    These jobs are really important for an equal, balanced economy, too. Not everyone has the mental capacity or discipline to get a highly technical career, but plenty can do this kind of work. This leads to a higher demand for lower class work, which raises lower class wages and lowers poverty. A major problem in the US is that most of these kinds of jobs have either been shipped overseas or concentrated to a few urban areas in the country. This combined with a few other things have gutted demand for lower class work, which lowers lower class wages and adds to the inequality in the country.

martalist 10y ago

The article makes it sound very much like that, except 12 hours per day.

brudgers 10y ago

In modern manufacturing, a person would be lucky to hold the same job for ten years without being laid off or replaced. Many of these people work for staffing contractors who contract with tier 1, 2, or 3 suppliers and everything is just in time. Even when things are just in time, suppliers often start an assembly line, run it until their warehouse is full and then shut the line down to reduce expenses. In many parts of Alabama there is are millions of square feet of potential storage space in the form of obsolescent manufacturing facilities.

dilemma 10y ago
>Even when things are just in time, suppliers often start an assembly line, run it until their warehouse is full and then shut the line down to reduce expenses. JIT is part of lean. What you describe is short term mass production, not lean and also not JIT because it implies continuity.
- brudgers 10y ago
  An auto-plant is probably just in time. As one steps down the tiers, 1,2,3 the more likely batch processing is because lower tier suppliers tend to supply multiple companies at higher tiers and it often makes more economic sense to set up and tear down production lines than to try to run them in parallel. Having an inventory also means that a hitch in production will incur contractual penalties under a JIT supply contract. The customer doesn't care when the shipping container was loaded with parts at the supplier's facility, just when it arrives at their loading dock.

jacquesm 10y ago

> I'm not sure how much factory work is still like that, but imagine if that was your job today ... or for 8 hours per day, for the rest of your life. Sweat shops in Asia time their employees to 100ths of seconds for their tasks. I wished I was kidding, the timesheets for garment manufacture look like top sports results.

sqeaky 10y ago
If it can be done in a productive and enjoyable way, that might not be bad. I am sure that's not how it is. If I had to work in sweatshop for whatever reason, it would make it suck just a little less if it were done in "events". For example get three people to have a race to build ten pairs of shoes. Take a breather, cheer on another group of employees, maybe a small prize for someone winning such a race. Have timed trials to build the fastest pair of shoes. Don't take away your employees freedom, encourage them to do what you want, presumably make shoes in this contrived example. If people come up with their own ways to do it fast and they want to do more of it, then just maybe it will actually happen faster. I think it works better with code. I like competing with my coworkers on optimizing things that pass our unit tests. We each try to optimize a given snippet of code in a unit test. Whichever is fastest and passes all the tests wins and gets committed. EDIT - I know its shitty in these sweat shops, clearly what I described wasn't happening. I figured phrasing like: > I am sure that's not how it is. and > it would make it suck just a little less No need to downvote a silly idea so aggressively. If someone needs to work in a sweat and if the person running it is decent they will try to make it not suck. That is why most sweatshops suck they aren't run by decent and this wouldn't work. Which is why I even contrasted it with software.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  This is not some kind of silly contest. Too slow by a little bit and you're out, also yesterdays 'peak' is tomorrows cut-off.
  - scythe 10y ago
    >yesterdays 'peak' is tomorrows cut-off Obviously such a rule could not be applied for more than a few days. Humans have physiological limits no matter how hard you twist the psychological ones! I am guessing it is somewhere in between. What may have started as a clever manager's way to motivate employees became another bureaucratic hoop for people to jump through.

walshemj 10y ago

True but anyone who's done any "traditional" production engineering courses knows that for piece work you slow down when the time and motion guy comes round. Let alone the Spanish practices my ex colleague who was from Red Clydside (makes Malcom Tucker look like a mummys boy) told me about "and the tea boy got a grand in a brown envelope"

lazulicurio 10y ago

I work at a manufacturing company in the Midwest and, to me, the confusing part is where the modern push to treat workers like machines is coming from. In school, we were taught how Taylor was the "father" of scientific management, but that his ideas had mostly been superseded by those of Deming, who was a huge contributor to the post-war manufacturing miracle in Japan. And yet, the management at my current company---and from what I gather, many others---is decidedly Taylorist. It's like a race to the bottom where the prize is... something? I'm honestly not sure.

a3n 10y ago
It's short term quarterly thinking. Get my review and bonuses and get out. If any manager thinks the company will be around, he doesn't really care. He's not in it to build a company or a legacy or pride, he's there to get his money and get out. Driving your workers as fast as possible maximizes your bonus. Who cares what happens in ten years?
- jz87 10y ago
  Yeah if you read the article what you see is companies saving $7000 to avoid installing safety devices that ended up causing injuries that costed them multi-million dollar payouts in lawsuits. The thing is, the incentives to the executives making these decisions is skewed. If they avoid investing in safety equipment, they make their bonuses, which can add up as long as nothing too bad happens. Yet if there is a serious injury costing the company millions, the worst thing that can happen is they lose their jobs. For senior executives, the bonuses can be larger than their base salaries, so the upside is larger than the downside.
thatfrenchguy 10y ago
The prize is more money for the shareholders.
maxxxxx 10y ago
I think it's just easier to think that way and measure results. Empowering workers is more fuzzy and hard to measure.

cjslep 10y ago

This is exactly why I correct people from treating other people as "cogs in a machine" to treating them as "cells in a much larger organism".

hkmurakami 10y ago

I spent 3 months in a automobile parts factory in Japan as part of my new employee training. This was my job for 8 hours a day, less two 15 minute breaks and an hour lunch break. I started to develop this mind-body separation where I could do the manual labor while completely disengaging the mind towards some daydreaming, because the routine was so ingrained into my body that I no longer needed conscious brain power to move my hands and examine the visual elements of my tools and parts. Yes we were basically robots. At least the company genuinely cared about improving processes to prevent workplace injuries, even of the repeated stress category. While their jobs were not the most important part of these people's lives, it did enable them to provide well for their families and pay for their hobbies and pursuits (I think a blue collar job at a tier 1 Toyota group supplier pays better than a below average whitecollar job in Japan). And they seemed to have a sense of pride in their work.

gozur88 10y ago

I suspect most of that kind of stuff is automated now. Is that better? Those guys made good money for the type of work they were doing. Now they're working at Starbucks or faking a back injury for disability.

mercer 10y ago
Lots of work that could be automated still isn't. Furthermore, there are many jobs that are not technically factory work, but are essentially the same: dehumanizing, boring, conveyor-belt style work where you're treated like a robot. I did tons of those types of jobs growing up, my little sister does so currently, and I've met quite a few highly educated adults who are miserable being stuck in this kind of job. One good example would be the Amazon fulfillment center work, of which there are many articles online that paint a picture that I find horrifying. Another example that might not come to mind right away when you think 'factory work' is call centers. A friend of mine has a law degree but because she couldn't find work she ended up at a call center. While the work is less physically taxing, it's in some ways worse than a lot of factory work. She can't go on auto-pilot because she's talking to people, but at the same time she's forced to approach it as dumb factory work. Just complicated enough that you can't tune out, but boring enough that it gives no satisfaction. Aside from high quotas, they track bathroom breaks and if she crosses some (equally unreasonable) threshold a manager will have a 'friendly chat' about it. Aside from the fact that I've never met anyone who makes 'good money' doing this type of work, I personally don't blame anyone who does this long enough to eventually fake a disability or something. In fact, I'll happily keep paying high taxes if it supports that kind of 'disability'. No human should be forced to do that kind of stuff in this day and age, least of all in a developed nation. That said, I think the 'faking disability to avoid factory work' type of person is mostly conjured up in support of particular political views. I'm just saying I'd not even be mad if it were the case.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
  These jobs are really important for an equal, balanced economy, too. Not everyone has the mental capacity or discipline to get a highly technical career, but plenty can do this kind of work. This leads to a higher demand for lower class work, which raises lower class wages and lowers poverty. A major problem in the US is that most of these kinds of jobs have either been shipped overseas or concentrated to a few urban areas in the country. This combined with a few other things have gutted demand for lower class work, which lowers lower class wages and adds to the inequality in the country.