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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...
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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!
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.
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.
"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...
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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.
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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?
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.
>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.
Take away someones humanity and you take away human error?
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.
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.
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.
The expression is a well-oiled machine.
A well-oiled team? Well, that's just kinky.