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> * 14. Everyone in the port, or at least a lot of them, knew this was happening.* > 15. None of those people managed to do anything about the rule, or even ge

> * 14. Everyone in the port, or at least a lot of them, knew this was happening.* > 15. None of those people managed to do anything about the rule, or even get word out about the rule. No reporters wrote up news reports. No one was calling for a fix. The supply chain problems kept getting worse and mostly everyone agreed not to talk about it much and hope it would go away. It's been my experience that nearly all of the times it's the low-, and maybe mid-, -level workers who see problems. And it's usually the upper end of the business or bureaucracy who end up ignoring the problem. And then it's also been my experience that after the problem gets ignored for a while, the people who see the problem also don't report later problems because they know it won't be fixed and they're not empowered to fix it themselves. This is a widespread problem in my eyes.

Invictus0 5y ago
There was an article about this phenomenon recently--the author called it the "thermocline of truth". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27977056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27977056
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > There was an article about this phenomenon recently--the author called it the "thermocline of truth". The author was using terminology introduced quite a while ago by Bruce F. Webster: https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-themocline-of-truth/ https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-...
bluGill 5y ago
While you are not wrong, it isn't 100% true either. The problem has long been recognized in various forms and solutions have been developed. I did a factory tour a few years back for a local major manufacture (I work for them but I won't say who...), and there were signs all over "stop the line: you have the power!" to remind workers when they see something wrong they have the power to stop everything until it is fixed. It doesn't happen often, but more than once a worker has seen a part that looked "off" stopped the line and had a full investigation done. Sometimes it was determined things were okay, but other times the wrong alloy was used if the part had gone to a customer it would have been an early failure. Of course the above is only able to fix local issues. It doesn't really leave any way for someone to say "we will have a bottleneck here if something else goes wrong"...

Invictus0 5y ago

There was an article about this phenomenon recently--the author called it the "thermocline of truth". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27977056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27977056

dragonwriter 5y ago
> There was an article about this phenomenon recently--the author called it the "thermocline of truth". The author was using terminology introduced quite a while ago by Bruce F. Webster: https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-themocline-of-truth/ https://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-...

bluGill 5y ago

While you are not wrong, it isn't 100% true either. The problem has long been recognized in various forms and solutions have been developed. I did a factory tour a few years back for a local major manufacture (I work for them but I won't say who...), and there were signs all over "stop the line: you have the power!" to remind workers when they see something wrong they have the power to stop everything until it is fixed. It doesn't happen often, but more than once a worker has seen a part that looked "off" stopped the line and had a full investigation done. Sometimes it was determined things were okay, but other times the wrong alloy was used if the part had gone to a customer it would have been an early failure. Of course the above is only able to fix local issues. It doesn't really leave any way for someone to say "we will have a bottleneck here if something else goes wrong"...