[giorgosts]

Bullshit story the consultant made up to bolster his point (93% efficiency claim from a foreman wtf).

Of course finding some help moving parts around for the welders would be the first thing the foreman would think of, because thats what foremans do all the time in factories.

Maybe the welders chose to work this way (i.e. inefficiently) because continuous welding produces fatigue which risks H&S and lowers the quality of the product.

So if the story was real, the solution would be extra personnel so the welding is done continuously, by rotating people between welding, moving parts and other jobs.

[nerdponx]

That literally is the solution they landed on: they hired helpers, i.e. extra personnel.

The critical difference is that they did not need to hire more welders, buy more welding equipment, set up more welding stations.

I don't care if the story came right out of Aesop's fables, because it's a good story and it makes a good point.

[anenefan]

The problem is it's not really a good story to tell, because this leads people, who might not know any better, to later in life recount to some welder friend(s) they happen to know, about how the article's creator was the guy who worked out welders needed TAs ... or one fabrication welding business needed TAs. It's better not to make things up, or use really really incredulous examples, that may lead people to unwittingly embarrass themselves.

It's almost like a story where the genius works out the boss needs a secretary.

When it comes to inventing stuff, important points are often overlooked.

Imagine if the same sort of story recounted a company with a 9 to 5 office where 100 people worked solely at their desktop computer station back in the days of W98 or XP doing whatever it was they did. The guy observes when people arrive for work they're not productive because the first five minutes their system was booting and virus checking. There's over 8 hours of lost production so it's worthwhile to hire an additional low paid casual worker for minimum award, with the minimum required hours for casual (here it's iirc it's been around four hours a day,) to arrive a couple hours beforehand to ensure all systems are running so workers can start working immediately when they walk through the door. Clearly that sounds right, but most here would know, in practice, for many workers, output would not increase substantially. The nuance is in the finer details.

[msrenee]

This has to be either the world's dumbest foreman or at least largely fiction. And this consultant would have had to have been the first guy who walked into the shop besides the foreman and the welders who either also had never worked in a functioning production environment or had already told the foreman to hire a material handler and been ignored. Or they really liked the overtime and dragging pallet jacks around.

I've seen some pretty terrible inventory management and poor process flow, but this is a whole other level.

[paul_f]

The story might not be a accurate, but the concept is certainly valid. I see this sort of thing all the time. This terrific story helps people to understand the core point, that busy does not equal productive.

[Nifty3929]

Yes, exactly. THE STORY IS NOT ABOUT WELDING! It is about having misconceptions about efficiency and productivity, and that people being busy does not mean they can't be more productive.

[anenefan]

Though it tries, it's a bad story about determining work flow efficiencies and misses the mark. Surely if the consultant had been immersed in any industry for long, they could have recounted where they zeroed in on one particular metric to determine efficiency. Mind it's a very good story of a consultant picking one metric and the result ... as already stated, just happened to be extremely lucky I can probably recount a tale or two where the agent (new management or new ideas from up top) for change was totally clueless and things went downhill ... there is period where profits don't take a hit and by the time the fall out is happening, it's hard to wind back the clock ... customers / clients are on the decline.