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Yes, the company that has overtaken the other Semiconductor giants like Intel and Samsung must be doing a poor job with their internal tools. Not every company

Yes, the company that has overtaken the other Semiconductor giants like Intel and Samsung must be doing a poor job with their internal tools. Not every company uses Matlab or Mathworks to analyze data...they take the simple stuff that works and form it into something no frills and useful. A brand new engineer out of college may not realize it, but there are reasons why they do what they do.

heleninboodler 5y ago
> “That’s a lot of the work day. Some of the solution may be in software. Most of these meetings could be automated. The engineer who last worked with the equipment would record tool status and changes and make recommendations” to the next shift. ... since 1987. This process sounds like a liability to me. If you're having daily hours-long meetings for humans to communicate information to other humans, who then have to manually incorporate that information into their operations, and people who know the process say it could be automated, this sounds like a massive inefficiency (and opportunity for error) that only exists because labor has always been cheap enough to allow it to continue. Why wouldn't you spend a little money trying to optimize it?
- j_walter 5y ago
  It sounds like inefficiency to those that don't understand the process. These engineers are working on equipment that costs $10M-150M each. Having a long meeting in person meeting to discuss ongoing issues is not a liability. A brand new engineer probably doesn't realize the value in having face to face communication. Also...they didn't say it hasn't been changed since 1987, it's just the same system (like saying I have been using Windows since 1995).
  - walterbell 5y ago
    Thanks for your comments based on experience/reality!
  - rStar 5y ago
  - heleninboodler 5y ago
    I mean, if you know this first-hand, then I concede to your knowledge, but the article does say the system has only had some "slight improvements" since 1987. I can easily see dismissing someone griping just because the UI is "old", but if they have feedback about how the system of communicating critical data across shifts can be automated so it doesn't take three hours, I'd be all ears. I wouldn't advocate doing away with that face-to-face, but a three hour handoff knowledge dump for a 12 hour shift seems excessive. But you're right, I'm not familiar with the process. I'm relying on the testimony of that one complainy engineer.
    - necovek 5y ago
      Having critical information relayed in text form is a sure way to make the next person read it, right. There is a benefit to both: if they can be expressed in a system quickly (someone needs to carefully put it in, and someone needs to attentively read it), they can be expressed in a meeting quickly too. In practice, if it takes a 3h face-to-face handoff, it'd probably be 4h for each side to do it properly in a textual form. The benefit to having it recorded in the system is for reference and tracking purposes. But like any system, there are always inefficiences to remove and optimize. Bring it up with your manager and they should push for it if it makes sense.
      - heleninboodler 5y ago
        > Bring it up with your manager and they should push for it if it makes sense. Wholly agreed, but the word "should" is dual-meaning there. The implication I get from the article is that even if management "should" listen to this feedback and push for change, it doesn't necessarily do that, given the track record of overworking people and having little change in the software since the beginning of the company. It's a little easier to believe they top-down ordered the worker bees to shut up and be happy with the tools than it is to believe they nailed the best UX for 2021 chip-building in 1987... Sure, sure, sure: they are massively successful and that must mean there are zero improvements they can make to their processes, as the ancestor comment implies. Or maybe, just maybe, they could continue working on efficiency and do even better.
emodendroket 5y ago
This is really a weak argument. Just because they're successful doesn't mean everything they do is brilliant. It could easily be that they could be even more successful if they made changes. If that were not the case, we'd quickly run into contradictions where two companies did totally opposite things yet were both successful, and be unable to explain them with our framework.

heleninboodler 5y ago

> “That’s a lot of the work day. Some of the solution may be in software. Most of these meetings could be automated. The engineer who last worked with the equipment would record tool status and changes and make recommendations” to the next shift. ... since 1987. This process sounds like a liability to me. If you're having daily hours-long meetings for humans to communicate information to other humans, who then have to manually incorporate that information into their operations, and people who know the process say it could be automated, this sounds like a massive inefficiency (and opportunity for error) that only exists because labor has always been cheap enough to allow it to continue. Why wouldn't you spend a little money trying to optimize it?

j_walter 5y ago
It sounds like inefficiency to those that don't understand the process. These engineers are working on equipment that costs $10M-150M each. Having a long meeting in person meeting to discuss ongoing issues is not a liability. A brand new engineer probably doesn't realize the value in having face to face communication. Also...they didn't say it hasn't been changed since 1987, it's just the same system (like saying I have been using Windows since 1995).
- walterbell 5y ago
  Thanks for your comments based on experience/reality!
- rStar 5y ago
- heleninboodler 5y ago
  I mean, if you know this first-hand, then I concede to your knowledge, but the article does say the system has only had some "slight improvements" since 1987. I can easily see dismissing someone griping just because the UI is "old", but if they have feedback about how the system of communicating critical data across shifts can be automated so it doesn't take three hours, I'd be all ears. I wouldn't advocate doing away with that face-to-face, but a three hour handoff knowledge dump for a 12 hour shift seems excessive. But you're right, I'm not familiar with the process. I'm relying on the testimony of that one complainy engineer.
  - necovek 5y ago
    Having critical information relayed in text form is a sure way to make the next person read it, right. There is a benefit to both: if they can be expressed in a system quickly (someone needs to carefully put it in, and someone needs to attentively read it), they can be expressed in a meeting quickly too. In practice, if it takes a 3h face-to-face handoff, it'd probably be 4h for each side to do it properly in a textual form. The benefit to having it recorded in the system is for reference and tracking purposes. But like any system, there are always inefficiences to remove and optimize. Bring it up with your manager and they should push for it if it makes sense.
    - heleninboodler 5y ago
      > Bring it up with your manager and they should push for it if it makes sense. Wholly agreed, but the word "should" is dual-meaning there. The implication I get from the article is that even if management "should" listen to this feedback and push for change, it doesn't necessarily do that, given the track record of overworking people and having little change in the software since the beginning of the company. It's a little easier to believe they top-down ordered the worker bees to shut up and be happy with the tools than it is to believe they nailed the best UX for 2021 chip-building in 1987... Sure, sure, sure: they are massively successful and that must mean there are zero improvements they can make to their processes, as the ancestor comment implies. Or maybe, just maybe, they could continue working on efficiency and do even better.

emodendroket 5y ago

This is really a weak argument. Just because they're successful doesn't mean everything they do is brilliant. It could easily be that they could be even more successful if they made changes. If that were not the case, we'd quickly run into contradictions where two companies did totally opposite things yet were both successful, and be unable to explain them with our framework.