Have you looked into W. Edwards Deming at all? His ideas on quality and systems are echoed almost perfectly in this article and in what you're saying here, espe

Have you looked into W. Edwards Deming at all? His ideas on quality and systems are echoed almost perfectly in this article and in what you're saying here, especially in bringing systems thinking to the entire organization, not just engineering (where abolishing repetitive tasks using scripting comes as second nature). Really astute stuff. I think he'd reply on the point above, that it's far better to build the system and have it be less than perfect than to rely on a brittle process. "A bad system will beat a good person every time." - Deming So, it will probably not be a waste of time. Has your experience proven this out in general?