Yesterday I received an e-mail from one of the managers in the plant in which he directed me to force two orders to drop for shipment. The orders were due to ship next month. My new desk is close to this manager and I know he is more of speaking than emailing kind of guy. So I got up and walked over.

“Um, can you help me understand why we would be shipping these orders now if they are due next month?”

“They moved the orders out. They were due this month and then they screwed us and moved them out to next month. So now we are going to screw them back.” He made a ring with one hand and drove his finger through it enthusiastically to help illustrate his point. He can get upset about these kinds of situations, but he wasn’t at this time; he was just providing a friendly illustration for my benefit.

The customer in question is an overseas branch of our company. Often they move their orders around on us when the demand on them isn’t what they expected, causing us to pay the expense of their poor forecast. We have enough bad forecast of our own and don’t need to hold onto unique product for them that we can’t use and they ordered, especially at a sensitive time (end of the quarter).

“Ah,” I said, “They asked for it and now they don’t want it.”

“Yep,” he said. “We’re gonna send them a little present.” He sneered on the last word.

I went back to my desk and when I had a minute I checked the order history on the product in question. The orders were booked well in advance (they way we prefer it) and the dates were never changed. No orders had been cancelled (except one that showed out in 2034; some kind of keying error that was quickly cleaned up). I sent the manager an e-mail stating that their had been no date changes or cancellations, including the file which showed it so, and asked who told him there had been.

“They must have cancelled an order they had for this month,” he said. “We didn’t build the tools because we were bored.”

I checked the workorder history. The tools were built in June 2008. I sent him that, too. I did not see any reason to ship the orders and risk someone there complaining (to my boss’s boss) about us helping our numbers at their expense unless I had a good excuse for doing it, which I was not finding.

Today when I came in the orders were already dropped for shipment. I did not get any reply from the manager to my last message. Without indicating I already knew they were out for shipment, I asked him in the morning meeting if he wanted me to call and ask if they would take the shipments early (which I could have offered in the first place, if I thought of it; nothing wrong with asking).

“Nah,” he said, “don’t worry about it.”

Now of course when this manager first explained to me his rationale, he seemed to have a legitimate case (although I didn’t think my boss would agree with his reasoning).  I did not like the way he presented it; I have greatly edited his language down, because he goes enthusiastically and colorfully beyond the casual WTF even before he gets upset. I don’t care for it. It’s not the words, which I have heard enough to be familiar with, but his highly agressive style and attitude toward basically everyone else, whoever the else might happen to be at the moment. To be honest I find it intimidating as well as distasteful. I’m afraid of him; not controlled by fear, but definitely influenced.

If I don’t want to relocate, he’s probably going to be my next boss. The only role in this facility I see that would fit my skills and inclinations reports to him.  And beyond merely his style, he is evidently not interested in responding to my concerns.

Today I tried running my latest version of the on-time delivery tracker at the site with the highest volume. It didn’t exactly work because the latest version of the upgrade was not ready for roll-out; it was work in process. Even if I had thought it was finished there would have been glitches, so not even thinking of it as finished there were enough problems I never got through a complete and fair test.

My brother helped me identify that my biggest obstacle here is probably the network performance, which my personal experience on-site confirms is very poor. I suppose when one takes an industrial manufacturing facility and converts it into the business hub a certain lack of information infrastructure may become evident.

My hunch is that the solution (operating the analysis on the local sytem, without handling files from the network) will adequately address the problem. Since my boss clearly does not want me to spend more time on this project, a successful outcome of this test will result in him saying “Okay, whatever you tested, let that be the working system and let’s move on.” I cringe in anticipation. Please refer back to remarks about this not being a finished version. It is painful trying to do maintenance on a system that was never actually set up to keep running.

Another thing I did today was haul out more than a week’s worth of data from the version running at my own site, and send out my reminder to everyone who was supposed to check over it and fill in the gaps. Nobody here really uses the data from this analysis; we package it up and send it off like we are supposed to, but we don’t try to do anything with it. So what outcome of this stop/go analysis will I consider a success? I ought to be clear on my bias before performing the test, don’t you think?

Toay I took a half day off work. It was secheduled in advance because I have trouble using my vacation if I don’t schedule it in advance, which they have been asking us to do.

Next week I have to give a stop/go recommendation to my boss on one of my biggest projects, the analysis of our late orders. The project pretty much fell apart at the end of June with unexpected problems in the implementation and it has been on the rocks ever since. I have been avoiding it, really, because I don’t know how to fix the problems. It sounds like my boss has already decided to axe it which makes me want to save it.

Of course it sounds like my boss has already decided to give me a number of new projects. In about two weeks I am scheduled to fly out there and meet my new work. I’m excited because I like new problems that I think I can solve in new ways. But I am worrying that my late October experience will be trying to keep four or more big projects going at once.

No word yet on whether my CPIM training will be approved.  This would take a half a day per week of my work time and also some of my own time as well. CPIM certification would allow me to move into planning and scheduling (something with more tangible effect on production facility) and may form a bridge into more technical database work.

Today my boss asked me again if I would be willing to relocate. It was funny timing. On the one hand it was obvious; I had told him before that one of the reasons I was not willing to move was the care I was giving my grandfather, who recently died.

But that didn’t seem to be why he mentioned it. He brought up the possibility of relocating after he outlined a number of projects he wanted me to be involved in, and for every one I can recall it would be beneficial for me to there, several states away, rather than here. Further, all the projects would have very minimal impact here–at the site I am supposedly assigned to.

If you look at my job title it says something about orders. I was supposed to be a liason for the central order managament functions, helping drive more customer awareness and order fulfillment sensitivity. I’ve always preferred back-room database development to front line people manipulation so how much my work has been defined by what the description suggests has always been murky. But in the course of changes we have begun a plan to send products from the factory to the central distribution warehouse, rather than shipping from this site to the customer, and that further undermines what role someone with my title would have here.

My boss said we had to consider my future development and further roles I could take with the company. But I already told him how I wanted to be developed and what future role I was looking at.

I hedged. I told him I would seriously consider it and let him know if my mind changed. It’s not fair to ask me at work, because when I am at work all I think about is work; and as concerns work, I would prefer to be there than here. But the sharp division between my work and the rest of my life is something I would like to erode. As far as I can see, I would have to leave my family to pursue my work–a devil’s bargain.

I am not saying that Acme is actually mentioned in this article, but I will say that the strategy described here is in practice at Acme. Including this part: “If companies force untenable terms on their suppliers, they risk putting vendors out of business, which could end up disrupting their own operations.”

I dislike such selfish, abusive practices. And I don’t care that “everyone is doing it.”

See why I am not in charge?

Every once in a while I get to thinking that Acme is about as backwards as a manufacturing company can be and still be in business at all. Then I hear a story that makes me realize that a lower echelon still exists; the supplier of ours heating the plant with trash barrels and handling internal communications with post-it notes, for example.

Or this most recent story about a factory where a particular department that my friend works in is considered the bottleneck on the whole facility. They were required to work overtime. However, none of the other operations were. Before the required overtime was completed there was no more room to put the finished work and no more unfinished work to work on.

The efficiency was not up to standard in this department. I do not remember if it was for the entire department or just for the second shift. The first shift was doing all they could to help out by overlooking all the small-run orders, including small quantities expedited for urgent customer needs, and only running the higher efficiency large jobs. The efficiency problem in the department, by the way, was not based on how many upset customers there were, but simply on how much was produced–quite apart from whether it was wanted or needed.

For some reason the bozos on second shift were either unable to figure out this game or unwilling to play along. They got stuck running the small and dearly needed orders, to the detriment of their productivity. Their efficiency was so awful that the management announced their would be a layoff if productivity did not improve. It did not, so people were laid off.

Then the management came out and spent about 20 hours observing the department work. I am not sure if they caught on to the difference between running huge batches of product (the quality of this product degrades over time, by the way) and running small customer orders. But they did catch on to one thing: They decided that the department needed more people! They are even going to hire more than were in the department before they laid off anybody.

That could sound like good news, especially to someone like my friend who is running by himself a machine that requires two operators to be efficient. But there is nothing to suggest that the management actually learned that their processes and attitudes were horribly wrong, so there is no reason to think that a solution that sounds better will be well implemented or kept long enough to make a difference.

Our products have a reputation for their high quality. I have always been told this by managers but I have not necessarily taken them at face value. It is hard to imagine them saying anything else, so if they are only allowed to say one thing why should it be regarded as a meaningful statement? And working at a production facility, I hear lots of stories about quality issues that have gone wrong. I hear how they have been corrected and rumors of how they have been ignored.

A while back an issue came up with one of our tools. This particular tool is powered by compressed air. As it ran the tool was heating up beyond the established limit. I have no idea who set this limit. I don’t think the heat level was enough to cause an actual burn. I don’t know if the limit was some hyper-sensitive OSHA-type legal statute or a basically arbitrary company specification or whatever else may have been involved. I only know the tool was going above the limit.

The search began for component parts that were too large (by thousandths of an inch), creating excessive friction. Nothing could be identified. Finally, after a long time of delaying the product, I heard that they were trying a new strategy: let some of the air powering the tool blow on the parts that got hot, and don’t run the tool so long when testing it.

This sounded totally absurd. A little extra airflow can’t possibly solve a mysterious problem caused by excessive mechanical friction by metal parts rubbing at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute. And shutting the tool off sooner in the test is a really fool-proof way of making sure it doesn’t get too hot. Tough luck for someone actually using the tool on the job, but it would then pass the test.

After commenting sarcastically on this solution to several coworkers over several days, I actually asked people with technical knowledge why we would consider this a valid solution. Then it was explained to me that the heat will actually continue to climb after the tool is shut off, above the maximum temperature it would reach while running. The same thing can happen with cars, which is why the fan will sometimes start on car with the engine off. And air can be an effective coolant–again this ultimate coolant for a car, albeit with two types of liquid coolants intermediating. But compressed air running at high volume through a small area will be especially effective. The volume means that any given unit of air is required to dissipate less heat; and the fact that it is industrial compressed air means that it is cold. Compressing air reduces its volume which tends to reduce its temperature. Compressed air can make tools so cold that they frost over.

All of this information I already knew as separate facts, I just didn’t take the time to ponder the issue until I saw the sense in the solution; I jumped to the assumption that we were making a cheap play to resolve a troublesome issue that we didn’t want to own up to. This is why I am not the company spokesperson.

More recently, an employee of our plant anonymous told a local paper that our facility would be closed. This anonymous tipper had no source for his information, nor was there the slightest indication that he had a position in the company where he might be privy to such information. (As an aside, I have heard comments from both the HR manager and the plant manager indicating that neither of them expects much advance warning if a closure decision is made; so there really isn’t anyone in the plant at all who I think would have prior knowledge of a closure decision.) However, this anonymous tipper shared his pessimistic view with the newspaper, which asked the official corporate spokesperson for a comment. I’ll bet you donuts and coffee the paper first tried to get a comment from the local staff and was referred to corporate. At any rate, the corporate spokesperson would neither confirm no deny this rumor.

Please refer to the opening remark. If there is only one statement they are allowed to make, why should it be considered meaningful? But I had two people point to that statement from the corporate representative as an ominous sign, as proof we would close. I usually don’t even hear a rumor until it is two days old, so for two people to mention it to me made this a very hot rumor indeed–even if it amounted to being scared of one’s own echo.

Much more plausible was the tip I got from my colleague at another facility that they were going to be closed. This colleague has a much longer work history and deeper connections. In the latest of a series of layoffs a number of other employees were let go on Friday, and then our manager suddenly made plans to fly up on Monday during heavy travel restrictions. In fact some people at another location thought our boss was going to be there on Monday. That’s about as certain of doom as you can possibly get.

But that was wrong too. They are still there.

I always want to be more plugged into the rumor network. Whenever something big happens I hear the rumors had it a week before it went down. But I am starting to remember that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

When I wrote here more frequently, one of my inspirations was watching the interaction between management and workers. My first work for hire was alongside workers, and the cultural background of my family would have a blue collar if it wore collared shirts at all. But I have always favored ideas that look neat on paper, and preferred clever schemes to reduce repetitive labor over unhesitating engagement of the actual work. Since I left for college I have hovered at the periphery of the white-collared world, not yet fully immersed but further than ever from the rough hands and rough jokes of the fellowship of hard labor.

More than anything else about work, I dislike its repetition. I will try to lend a hand to just about any work, but when the days ahead look to me much the same as the days gone by, I get impatient. I’m always looking for change, for a challenge, for a chance to find some solution never before seen under the sun.

It is said that the working class doesn’t like change. I don’t know about that. It is probably true, to an extent. I myself like a steady frame of reference to keep my constant changes in a rational relationship. But I think there’s a deeper root to working class obstinance. Working people hate hypocrisy. There is nobody more frequently the footman to aristocratic changes than hypocrisy. When some change is announced, look for any of these trademarks:

• The new right way is the same as an old right way, two or three changes ago.
• Group (department, business) A is told that it is absolutely essential that this be done, but Group B doesn’t have to do it.
• Objective A is obviously at cross-purposes with Objective B.

It is marvelously easy to spot one of these smirking sycophants fawning along any time somebody important comes through announcing changes. More wonderful still is the ability of the white-collar class to ignore these hypocrisies; sometimes they will feign they do not exist, but more often they just politely ignore them for the greater good. After all, the essential purpose of the new change is valid; it’s not productive to quibble about the details. Better to pretend they don’t exist. In public, at any rate; plenty of griping goes on behind closed doors. But no matter how much it outrages common sense and decency, the middle management always comes out smiling saying, “We can do this, we should do this, we will do this, it’s a wonderful idea.”

It’s all they exist to do. Working people don’t have to be managed into doing something that makes sense. They must be corralled and herded and cajoled and threatened into things which do not appear to be good ideas at all. If middle managers didn’t support the policies they didn’t like, they would be simply more obstinate cows to be herded along. It’s marching to the beat that distinguishes the soldier from the criminal.

The duplicity runs deeper, and at every level it disgusts the worker. To succeed in management you must ask for a favor when you deserve a reward, call compromising on a good idea improving it, attempt to ingratiate yourself with your enemies and call on the goodwill of your friends. The natural shape of virtue and vice is turned inside out; humility is the cloak of treachery. The working man would rather damn his enemies and reward his friends promptly and with sincerity; and if he wanted to be somewhere tomorrow he’d start walking in that direction today.

Ethically I am much inclined to agree with the working man. It is possible to be a manager in true humility, obeying and supporting decisions you do not agree with up to the moral boundary of conscience. But it is a very difficult thing, akin to walking through a maze while keeping your gaze fixed above on the north star. You can never focus on what is right in front of you; either you will smash yourself against the wall in front of you, trying to get straight through to your goal, or you will become lost in the twists and turns of the labyrinth.

The struggle to maintain personal integrity while fulfilling the managerial responsibilities fascinates me, since I don’t want to plod in the circle of routine work but neither want to surrender the ethics of justice. When I worked with the shipping department I saw this drama played out almost daily. Shortly after I moved back to the front office I sat in meetings at a higher level than I ever had before and was especially cautious of saying too much. Particularly with the critical theme of my remarks, I do not want anything too personal or commercially confidential finding its way onto this blog.

With the recent changes in leadership in the levels of Acme above me, my role appears to be settling toward something more routine with very little opportunity to observe the management conundrum (other than as it is applied to myself personally). I have been reorganized to report up to my former manager through a new supervisor (this is not related to the much larger changes in leadership mentioned in previous posts). In prior months, when my manager was discussing my current and future career, my interest in possibly entering the ranks of management came up. I have always been happy with my manager and I wouldn’t lightly discount his advice, so when he suggested that I read The One-Minute Manager, I thought I ought to.

Aside from some appalling, smarmy gimmicks about touching people to show you care, the gist of the book was the same as any other advice I have ever seen. It can be reduced to two points:

1. Respect your people.
2. Communicate clearly your expectations, what was well done, and what is not satisfactory.

It’s not the concept of good management that is hard to grasp, it’s the practice. In my experience of being managed, the hardest of all is communicating expectations. But some are still better than others. And I think the manager I have now gets lost in the maze of blending the facts you know with your own opinions and with what you are allowed to say; the result is a blend of indirect, non-judgmental, incremental statements and questions that do not seem to be built around any central purpose. I throw him an issue and he looks at both sides, drives for root causes, considers the consequences, looks at ultimate goals, and comes back with some kind of intermediate step which admittedly doesn’t solve anything but is hopefully a step toward making things better eventually somehow.

I sympathize with him–I often feel like I am in over my head when I have to balance my strong opinions and known facts with the subtler arts of working with the powers that be. I think that while I was in the indeterminate position of possibly being in the chain of management in shipping but possibly just an auxiliary I sometimes was too blithe in accepting some new policy as if there were nothing objectionable about it, too quick to expect anyone who wasn’t going along of just being perverse. We’re trying to make things better, people! What’s wrong with you, why don’t you cooperate?

There are managers who lack one or more of conscience, perspicuity, or common sense. But there are also managers who haven’t figured out how to get these virtues to cooperate with the directives they have to carry out. I am not ready to put my new manager into that former category. I only hope he quickly learns that applying management techniques such as promulgated in The One-Minute Manager is not managing. The use of a technique is not the same as the accomplishment of a purpose.

If you are sailing a boat and the wind is not blowing the direction you need to go, you cannot simply ask the wind to cooperate and expect results. You have to tack, to take a diagonal course that is a compromise between the direction the wind is blowing and the direction you want to go. But let us say that you have two possible destinations: one is north and one is south. The wind is blowing westward. If you ask your manager, “Where are we going?” and his answer is “We should tack,” he has given you the right technique from the textbook but he has not answered your question at all.

I think in extremes. I know I think in extremes and I know that limits my ability to adapt. When I have job situations that seem to require totally opposed solutions, I need my supervisor to explain to me how to reconcile them. And when his answer is, “We need to tack,” I’m lost at sea.

I had pulled up a sales order for one reason or another when I notice on the order header:

Sold To: Friendly Neighborhood Distributor
Ship To: Recently Acquired Subsidiary of Acme

When I say “recently,” I do not mean last week. I mean a major acquisition that was announced, reviewed, and has been in place for at least one financial quarter. Our part of the business operates under Acme’s flagship name, so there is no possibility that a buyer ordering the product would not realize it is made by their new parent company. No, for whatever inscrutable reason, we have chosen to pay a distributor their markup for them to sell us our own product–without their ever touching the item, at that.

Clearly I am in the wrong business. I wrote an short e-mail to my boss pointing out this nonsense; I said we had an opportunity to drive an acquisition synergy.

It was a week for sarcastic e-mails.

Acme Tool Co. is not especially vulnerable to the current economic climate, supported as we are by a repair industry, and repair being a fact in a cynic’s life and not just a realtor’s dream of an ever-exploding house value. But the collapse of unbounded optimism is sucking quite a lot down the drain with it. Somewhere around a dozen salaried employees were shed from our plant; we were among the fortunate, and the discerning ear can hear the tremors of further exfoliation.

One of the reasons our employment has not deteriorated further is the decision by our new Vice-Admiral to build up inventory–lots and lots of inventory. I’m sure I commented at least once on this site that the simplest way to improve your on-time delivery is to have plenty on hand to ship, and that is the general direction we are headed in. The obsession with cash flow — or inventory turnaround — has faded to a background murmur. After all you can’t worry about cash flow unless you have money flowing in, and you can’t have that without product flowing out. And today that means you can’t afford to let a customer walk away just because you couldn’t ship on the same day he ordered.