Re:Principles
by ci5er on Friday December 23, 2016 @05:04PM
(#13247458)
Don't get me wrong. The consensus attainment rituals/processes I found there (Japan, mid-80s~mid-90s) were mind-numbingly slow/tedious/inefficient.
But, in companies that manufactured products intended to compete in the global marketplace (and not something intended to meet some local need), the internal processes for doing root-cause analysis of design, manufacturing or even business model defects was pretty direct/efficient/ruthless and impersonal. To me that makes some sense: If I were on a team of 100 NASA engineers, all of us armed with slide-rules, trying to send some people to the moon and back, I wouldn't want feelings (or social standing) to get in the way of the process of verifying that the calculations were correct.
But, in companies that manufactured products intended to compete in the global marketplace (and not something intended to meet some local need), the internal processes for doing root-cause analysis of design, manufacturing or even business model defects was pretty direct/efficient/ruthless and impersonal. To me that makes some sense: If I were on a team of 100 NASA engineers, all of us armed with slide-rules, trying to send some people to the moon and back, I wouldn't want feelings (or social standing) to get in the way of the process of verifying that the calculations were correct.