Author: M Young

For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Galations 6:7

The fight started out on the production floor, the manufacturing manager got so mad he put his fist through a wall after accosting my Quality Engineering manager. I’ll be the first to admit it; I started it.  But it couldn’t compare with the time Continue reading “Genesis”

It was a beautiful spring morning but the traffic was horrific on HWY101 so I had to hurry. I didn’t have time to enjoy the ride even though I had pulled back the rag top on my little red Miata. The traffic was doing its snaking thing. Moving fast for a half mile then suddenly stopping. I didn’t understand why we all couldn’t just accelerate at the same time all pushing on the pedal at once and stop this infernal snaking. It appeared every hill in the road caused someone up there to brake as they were afraid to top it without first stopping and easing over. I knew just ahead we’d reach the last hill and a valley would put an end to this traffic dance. Not long after topping the hill and getting up to a respectable speed it happened. Continue reading “Automated Reasoning Technology”

Turns out I’m living longer than I was supposed to and I can’t help but notice that something is peculiar. It seems that every so often a repeating of events, philosophies, etc. occurs… and it’s really starting to bug me. Anyway as I was saying, it would appear I’ve seen all this before! The names have changed but the problems that seem to continually give birth to these “solutions” are still running rampant. We have had GURU’s rise in the Quality Revolution of the 80’s with no known survivors… At any rate we have a new generation that seem to be replowing the field of knowledge for some unknown reason. Take for example the definition of Quality. Continue reading “Definition”

My business experience indicates that given a specific situation, the resulting decisions and actions will more than likely be the same regardless of the person making them. Of course this assumes a rational mind and basic understanding of the situation. The whole recent movement toward “Best Practice” standardization is an acknowledgement of this. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) was supposed to provide a structure for housing and executing but got hung up on connectivity among all the functional silos (ie. Accounting, MRP, MES, CRM, SRM, etc.) As a result there still is no real “Planning” associated with ERP. The silos while being interfaced are still largely operated as separate functions with some commonality of terms and data such as common product, customer and supplier tables. The next real breakthrough in efficiency and quality will occur when Continue reading “Decisions – Enterprise Resource “Planning””

A Peddler of Perfection once wrote a book about quality called “I’ll know it when I see it.” That would indicate that he doesn’t actually know “it” before he sees “it”. In the present universe where “trial and error” is the norm, this is rather a typical approach. I would dare say there is a better chance that he would not know it even if he does happen to see it. The fact is, we need to know “it” so we can successfully see it or produce it or decide on it. For example, every counterfeit expert understands that their job is much simpler when they know in detail what genuine money looks like. Instead of looking for counterfeit money they look for the real thing. This plays out more readily in business.

There are two kinds of people in the world. (Actually there are more than two kinds but for this analysis let’s just imagine two.) Those that go to work thinking, “I wonder what’s going to happen today?” and those that know exactly what’s in store for them during the work day. All too often one is called “management” while the other is called “worker”. It may come as a surprise but in our present universe the person that has no idea what the day holds is usually paid much more than the other. In fact, the knowing others can’t wait to be in the unknowing state, Continue reading “Prevention Oriented System”

I don’t actually know but I’ve been told that most highways were once trails. Trails carved from the hooves of pigs or cattle or such.  I don’t know if they were feral pigs or longhorn cattle but over the years they carved niches out of the landscape and that seem like the only explanation for why the roads meander like they do. I used to be amazed watching the livestock come back to my grandmothers farmhouse pens every night from the fields. Regardless if they were pigs, cows or horses they would be lined up one behind the other following the same trail night after night.

I guess over time the beaten down trails became ruts from the passing of wagon wheels.  Those same paths were eventually traversed by cars. Of course they leveled the ruts with various materials to make for smoother rides but the trails still exist albeit the livestock would turn into road kill today.

In a marketing class I took one semester I learned that there are patterns associated with how people maneuver especially in crowds. I was surprised to see that people would seemingly attract to each other like magnets and cause congestion even though there was plenty of surrounding open space. It’s really kind of bizarre Continue reading “Pig Trails”

When I was a kid there used to be is a scene in the science museum at Fort Worth, Texas USA where some cavemen were performing brain surgery on a tribesman. I don’t know who performed the first surgery, but out of 120 prehistoric skulls found at one burial site in France, 40 had trepanation holes (a hole that is drilled or scraped into the skull). Surprisingly, many premodern patients had signs of their skull structure’s healing; suggesting that many of those that proceeded with the surgery survived the operation. Truly an amazing feat when you think that there was no anesthesiologist or understanding of antiseptics. It’s only been a few centuries ago that gold, silver and pearls were perscribed and ingested as a cure for some ailments and that the heart was finally determined to be a pump for the circulatory system. Certainly mankind has come a long way in the past couple of centuries. One could make the case that the average mom with a first aid kit Continue reading “Greatest Asset”

“Freedom” has long been a rally cry to further political and social agendas. Today “free will” is a mainstay in commercialism especially on the part of producers. We are constantly bombarded by the notion that government regulation is bad, strangling businesses with red tape that will ultimately increase costs to consumers and limit their choices. The idea is that business will regulate themselves and look out for consumers after all, they need them to stay in business. Laissez-faire capitalism will always right itself and prove a better protector of consumerism than government. Do you believe that? Well maybe a review of the tobacco industry would be in order. I won’t be doing that in this article but suffice it to say they have no qualms about killing off  customers. Why? Maybe its because Continue reading “Elephant In The Room”

Over a hundred years ago, Australian wool growers, outraged at the decimation of their herds by native wild dogs, made a landmark business decision. It may have been one of the great knee-jerk reactions of all time. It has cost millions and millions of dollars and the expenditure of untold thousands of hours of labor in the blazing Outback sun. And sadly, it may have hurt business far more than it has helped.

The problem: Dingoes, wild dogs native to Australia for at least 3500 years, taking their fair share of lambs in clandestine raids on the newly introduced and rapidly expanding sheep camps. The wool growers, naturally enough, were outraged.

Their solution: build a fence. A six foot high fence. A fence that eventually grew (over the next hundred years) to be over 3300 miles long. A thousand miles longer than the great wall of China!

The result: Continue reading “The Mother of all Fences”