Slashdot Mirror
Better Factories Through Role Playing
pacopico writes "A former Ford executive has taken his unique brand of factory training to the public. According to Businessweek, Hossein Nivi has set up a new company called Pendaran that forces people to endure a week-long, manic training simulation that's meant to produce safer, better workers. The participants — lots of people from the tech and military fields — get yelled at by actors while they try to assemble things like golf carts and airplanes in a simulation that mixes virtual tasks on computers with real world tasks. After their spirits get broken, the workers actually start functioning as a well-oiled team. It sounds both awesome and bizarre."
they are lunatics and assholes
Getting yelled at until your spirit is broken? You think that sounds awesome?
This isn't new or unique, we've been whipping slaves as long as we've had them. Dehumanize people, then work them like animals. Woo hoo sign me up.
just pay them better and give them better health benefits. But using military grade training and manipulation techniques works too I guess...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I used to be a worker like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.
Oh...is that not what they meant by role playing? I guess the dice could pose a safety hazard on the factory floor.
Sure, it may work, despite the dubious methodology, but who is actually going to pay to have their workers go through this? Since the bubble days of the 90's, training is an area that has been eliminated from virtually all budgets in favor of hiring only 'experienced' workers. No organization wants to pay for training anymore even when there is a shortage of experienced labor. I worked for a chip manufacturer that in the early-mid 90's put new production staff through a MONTH of 8-hour-a-day classroom training before they even got into the fabrication facility. After a couple years, it was down to 3 weeks, then 2, then 1, then layoffs. The modern management culture says that there is a limitless pool of cheap, experienced labor, so why train?
After their spirits get broken, the workers actually start functioning as a well-oiled team. It sounds both awesome and bizarre.
This has otherwise been known as "Boot Camp" or "Basic Training" for generations of soldiers.
I can see the fnords!
Pretending to be a cog in the machine instead of a human being helps reduce humanity related inefficiencies.
I'll just wait for the robots: they are way better than pretending to be robots.
The Pendaran method, designed to force participants to rise above chaos and develop problem-solving techniques, is diametrically opposed, a sort of indictment of Six Sigma and other beloved corporate training regimes.
No, it's just yet another stupid "corporate training regime" designed to separate MBAs from their and everyone else's money. Which wouldn't be a problem, except for the "everyone else" part--companies actually spend money on this kind of crap instead of on things like, you know, salary and benefits for the people who actually do the work that keeps the company in business. And there are more and more of these parasites infecting the corporate world every year, which ought to be enough to convince the Invisible Hand cultists that maybe there's something wrong with their cherished idea that the market weeds out inefficient management ... except they're all too busy congratulating themselves on buying into the latest bullshit fad to pay attention.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It sounds awesome? wtf happened to /.?
more simulation / hands on training is needed all over.
Six Sigma and other beloved corporate training regimes. are seem to be that PHB stuff run by people who don't know much about the real work.
works great until an employee an-hero's himself and everyone around him from the stress
"After their spirits get broken, the workers actually start functioning as a well-oiled team."
I'm pretty sure that after how corporations have been treating workers for the last couple of decades, and especially during the past five years, any spirits the workers have don't need much to be broken.
until we have robots to build and run the tanks and jets that run our military industrial complex and enforce the will and desires of large corporations we still need a few factories. That's why we keep bailing out the auto industry. If we ever go to war for real you can't just build that stuff overnight. Wish I was joking...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Europe's a big enough market that we started building them a bit better. Mostly because it was too expensive to run one production line for crap American Cars and one for Decent Euro cars. They're not great, but they'll do 140,000 miles.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I believe I did this in the military, in the basic training (you know, the part where a drill sergeant shouts at you a lot).
It was called "team building exercises".
It did wonders to make us see all officers as idiots.
Sure, it also made us help each other along the exercises and get to see the worst sides of each other. But I don't think it made us a more lean team. Really not worth the cost of how much we learned to hate the military and it's idiots.
Doing that kind of crap to team up factory workers? Eh.
Send them out on a week long survival course (one where you actually learn something and get to enjoy the nature) or even better, have them team up in paintball teams for a week. Or build fighting robots together, why not, without the shouting.
Don't even have to involve actors. That would be enough to have them work together as a team, and they wouldn't actually hate the bosses' guts for the rest of their life.
Only idiots deserve to get shouted at. Ever.
Over the factory gates.
Have gnu, will travel.
Is that you?
This comes from people that never worked within an assembly line, which is basically "shut up and do your work, youre not paid for thinking here". In case there is a problem it is usually your fault because no one would expect that there are faulty parts. With that being presented hours or days later after you finished that work trying to tell what went wrong is like trying to tell what you had for breakfast 5 weeks ago - depending on the lines speed. The fun starts when someone created a bogus report that mixed any possible source in a single keyword and tells you it was all your fault.
Where is that different from being yelled at by some actor? Managers in factories are not payed for their job, they receive a fee per convincing performance.
I've always wondered about these sorts of worker training programs. The boot camps, the firewalking, paintball, etc. If they're mandatory, how are they not a form of hazing?
fortunately we have universal healthcare, so the "trainers" wouldn't get a big bill on top of the beating.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Parent managed to get Role Playing, manic, simulation, broken, and well-oiled into one article. Google is going to be sending some seriously confused people to this article.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
" After their spirits get broken, the workers actually start functioning as a well-oiled team"
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
L Torvalds
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
1) Make everything as boring as possible to the point of snoring
2) Run a truly impressive blonde secretary on a random errand through the factory floor every now and then
3) Watch the mistakes and accidents
?) Profit
>After their spirits get broken, the workers actually start functioning as a well-oiled team.
You should know you can learn to work as a well oiled team without breaking anyone's spirits.
Usually it involves good communication, clear roles, sensible motivation structures and weeding out the dickheads.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
sounds an awful lot like military basic training.
This just describes the standard stages of team building:
Storming : total chaos, no one knows who's in charge, roles, etc...
Forming: The team starts to coalesce and the goals start to be realized
Norming: You've reached equilibrium and the team is formed, work is near optimum for the team barring outside enhancers (more training, etc...)
Reforming: Oscillation between norming/reforming barring, again, outside influences as new projects/priorities disrupt the norming but which quickly resettle back as they've moved beyond the storming/forming (or it can looked at as these stages happen so quickly for an already normed team that they are just one stage perturbation.)
The only thing that I see as inovative is the actual hands on long term role playing aspect of it.
-rs
Take away someones humanity and you take away human error?
The example company ran a few dozen people through it, causing quite a bit in savings. Apparently enough so that the rest will be sent through too. Pays for itself then, see?
I know this is Slashdot, and you're all obligated to make snarky judgments based on the summary, but the summary's taking you all for quite a ride. Read the article - the training basically gives you a chance to roleplay screwing up enough to where you learn not to. It's not about dehumanizing people as much as it is getting everyone on the same level (e.g. with the nicknames) and giving people a chance to screw up without actually hurting anything. The screwing up leads to frustration which leads to giving people incentives to get it right - you don't forget lessons learned from having something blow up in your face. Apparently after this training, this one company had a 70% reduction in safety issues which translated to $1,000,000/year savings. For all you people suggesting they should just give them raises... well... at least this way the company has extra money to do that with. Now who's willing to bet that's *not* where the money gets spent? Anyway, go read it.
Wow, just what we need to stay competitive...another "flavor of the month" management scheme.
Add this to Quality Circles, TQM, 5-S, Six-Sigma, LEAN, and all the rest of the psychobabble bullshit. This is what happens when MBAs and HR types try to do what engineers are taught to do.
Maybe if the bean-counters didn't fuck the process up in the first place with impossible OE and COMG KPI's, revolving-door personnel policies, zeroed-out training budgets, and Run to Fail maintenance programs, they wouldn't need to piss money aware on ludicrous self-congratulation seminars.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Boot camp for pre-robots.
I would probably hit the virtual or real person screaming at me. What really would work is forcing everyone to come to work as a traditional D&D role playing class. I work much better as an archer or wizard.
In order to keep them productive they need to build them backup. That's how the military does it. They tear everyone down, weed out the people who can't take it, then build the people who are left back up so they become strong confident individuals who are great at team work.
This sounds too much like the robber barons are regaining control. Workers are simply a resource (like water or electricity) meant to be consumed while incurring as little cost as possible and ultimately discarded.
Having been in the military, I can say without fear of contradiction, that this is what boot camp was back during the Vietnam "conflict." It also was my son's experience during Desert Storm. Now, from what I hear, the DI's have been backed off somewhat. Nothing like the scene from "Full Metal Jacket."
Just wait until someone with a sketchy psych profile is in the mix and somebody gets killed or commits suicide.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Isn't this just a variant of putting your "knowledge workers" in a cubicle farm? You dehumanize, disrespect, and demand ... the result is a lot of "followers" and that's what most businesses want. But then _most_ businesses don't need innovation or independent thought, just the "working dead" staggering though the usual routine ("Uuulllrrrraaa, I want to eat your brains!").
Man am I glad I don't work in a cubicle farm anymore!
simply killing someone, but people endorsing this need spay/neuter, at a minimum
This is actually reasonable.
A group of functional, well adjusted, cooperative (with each other) and observant people would be through this in no time.
The reason this is hell is because the participants are none of these.
The participants are my co-workers, and sometimes it takes a (simulated) beating to make them realize that they are being rediculous.
The expression is a well-oiled machine.
A well-oiled team? Well, that's just kinky.