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> Machines like these are a huge investment, so as long as they are still working flawlessly I worked at a Colgate manufacturing facility. They had an NJ plant
by hanniabu 3y ago
> Machines like these are a huge investment, so as long as they are still working flawlessly
I worked at a Colgate manufacturing facility. They had an NJ plant that had mechanical production lines. They've been running for 40 years so by the time i was there they were running flawlessly day in and day out and no matter what went wrong the maintenance crew knew how to fix it right away.
To save costs they shut down that plant and opened up a new one in SC with fancy brand new electronic machines that were supposed to have much better throughput. It took them years to get all the machines working and even still the old machines produced more in 8 hours than the new ones made in 12 hours. And whenever the was a problem with the machine it was always some wonky issue with the relays, sensors, and timing and we'd have sometimes days of downtime and would need OEMs to come in and fix it.
They wasted millions on that move which was supposed to save money and be more efficient. Many were fired/demoted from that.
- stevezsa8 3y agoIt's shocking reading stuff like this.
- gottorf 3y agoI know you probably meant that in jest, but it makes sense as we have a sea change between the pre-digital and post-digital generations. And this isn't just a "back in my day, we knew when to get off the lawn"-type of observation; the post-digital cohort is used to copying and pasting bits where the new instance is a perfect reproduction of the old. Naturally, they think that you can copy a NJ factory and paste it in SC, sprinkle in some enhancements, and voila! You get a better version. But the world of atoms is much messier than the world of bits, and in the former even something like getting the floor of the factory to be level is a nontrivial task.
- stevezsa8 3y agoMaybe this just shows that I have some experience under my belt... but I understand that most things take longer and cost more than planned. So the thought of scrapping a working factory with decades of fine-tuning already done... pains me. I worked with one project manager who was straight out of school. I couldn't believe that the direction and management of multiple teams of engineers was coming from someone who was going to make all their rookie mistakes on our project... and all the people who hired him already left for new jobs, so no consequences for them.
- wpietri 3y ago> Many were fired/demoted from that. Did they fire/demote the brain geniuses who kicked this off? Because the corporate stories I know like this generally involve the responsible parties getting promotions for their bravery and forward thinking, while the pain falls on the people they forced to work on it and who unaccountably failed to implement their perfect visions.