the lack of common sense decisions in MM over the last 10 years has dealt MM so many mistakes, the buzzword "Change" only works when serious thought is applied to it, A3M ,WYW, Centralized HR Depts, all failings and embarrassingly promoting JG's an extra title promotion for no reason. What on MR's green earth is going on, One Billion Dollars toward diversity that's not going to be effective for another twenty five years. But then , what do i know, I'm a production worker paid $15 an hour, but my common sense sees a company going downhill fast
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3M’s appalling behavior, indicative of greed and wanton disregard for human life, places the entire staff in the untenable position of having to defend and justify violations of federal, state, and local environmental laws. Moreover, their collective immorality coupled with extensive unethical practices, substantiate the financial penalties being heaped upon one of the most evil and dastardly companies in the world today.
I contend that some of the brightest and talented people are from production. For whatever reason they were not able to get the coveted degree. Perhaps they had to care for a loved one. Then you have te "C's get degrees" group who lived with mommy and daddy for 6 years to get a 4 year degree.
Some engineers use proper grammar; others have writing skills of an 8th grader. I've seen it myself. Wrong verb tenses, run on sentences, misuse of words like there instead of their, etc. Before spellchecker was standard, some of the engineers would misspell words like chief. Apparently, they must have learned E = mc2 but not "I before e except after c," to the point O.P.s were asked by plant superintendents to proofread the engineers writing of policies, etc.
Mgmt isn't good with grammar either. A local quality policy contains 8 commas, and quite possibly could be the biggest run on and incoherent sentence I've seen in my career. When other alternatives were provided the response was "you act like you have a vote in this." Arrogance and power trip was loud and clear. But hey, your policy that reads as if written by a 7th grader introduced to a new punctuation mark reflects on you no one else.
Doesn't Mike have a master's in engineering? How did he manage that?
Yeah what do they know.....besides grammar.
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows
Educated derelicts have ruined companies and countries. Hiring based upon a degree alone is an ignorant strategy. Example? Mike Roman.
Retired production engineer here. I've long since pondered the relationship between book smarts and people smarts. Consider a grid where book smarts are on one axis and people smarts on the other.
I have met a lot of people who have the book smarts but are woefully lacking in people smarts, that is the ability to work with all kinds of people, whether PhDs or production workers with HS diplomas only. I'll admit I started that way out of college because engineering schools rarely teach you anything about relationship skills.
There are fewer people that have both kinds of smarts, but you know them when you work with them because they are helpful, humble, and caring and give credit to all. Working for a few decades in manufacturing definitely helped me develop at least some people smarts, though probably not as much as I really need. I worked with a lot of technicians who may have had only HS degrees but were great at troubleshooting, had to work holidays, mandatory OT, swing shifts, etc. These folks along with some of the engineers who worked well with them are what made this company great. So that group of hard working people may not have had lots in the way of book smarts but more than made up for it with people smarts and teamwork.
Rarely did I ever find people with neither type of smarts, but they were perhaps the worst of all because they thought they somehow had both. There was a union official one time who was over the top and fit this mold, but I'm not anti union because I recognize the benefits we've received over the years thanks to unions. But a few of the officials were just plain jerks.
What I've seen since the GE way infected this great company 20 years ago when Mcnerney took over is the book smarts sans people smarts crowd took over and have just messed things up to the point this company may never recover. Desi wasn't the greatest CEO but he was a fine person with both kinds of smarts. I actually liked Buckley, but he was hemmed in by a board that wanted more GE style. The worst signs of all have been giving holiday everyday wins points and then telling people to hit the road Dec 31st. Talk about lack of people smarts! And there are more examples that others can share.
Here's to all who have spent years keeping our plants running even in the middle of winter, along with the engineers who do/did work well with the production teams and gave credit to those who came up with the good ideas.