When six sigma goes horribly wrong!!!!

[CaptDon]

After begging the morons at WABTEC to give me permission to repair
and re-purpose the test equipment in the storage area the A$$holes
put it all in the metal scrap dumpster and sent it out as waste!!!!
I had multiple emails that I sent out and even my contact information
taped to the shelves where the equipment was stored to contact me
before destroying the equipment!! This is just a small part of the reason
why management people who don't work in the labs should leave their
hands off the labs. I constantly have people borrowing our lab gear and
never returning it, then we are caught short in our Engineering and R&D
efforts. I could have given some of this gear to them and said keep it.
What a hit parade Tektronix, Systron Donner, Wavetek, Sorenson, Hewlett
Packard all of it gone! It pains me now to go to work for such a bunch
of narrow minded brain dead "Let's do Six Sigma and we will be so much
more efficient" clueless management turds!!! How can you be more
efficient when there is no test equipment to use/borrow. WABTEC, as
a company you blow!!! Just keep all those circuit boards being designed
and built in India and China while your locomotives sit dead on a siding
with faulty electronics. I hope to God EMD becomes a key player again
but I think Caterpillar is even stupider than WABTEC if that is humanly
possible!!!

[Tomorokoshi]

"This is just a small part of the reason why management people who don't work in the labs should leave their hands off the labs."

I've seen this in various forms over the years:

- Shelves of databooks getting tossed out by a manager on a moment's notice, with little opportunity to get at least a few of interest.
- Shelves of reference books getting tossed out by an executive secretary "because they were old".
- File cabinets of reference manuals getting tossed out by the calibration lab manager because it needed to be cleaned.

In no case were engineers or technicians asked.

[vk6zgo]

After begging the morons at WABTEC to give me permission to repair
and re-purpose the test equipment in the storage area the A$$holes
put it all in the metal scrap dumpster and sent it out as waste!!!!
I had multiple emails that I sent out and even my contact information
taped to the shelves where the equipment was stored to contact me
before destroying the equipment!! This is just a small part of the reason
why management people who don't work in the labs should leave their
hands off the labs. I constantly have people borrowing our lab gear and
never returning it, then we are caught short in our Engineering and R&D
efforts. I could have given some of this gear to them and said keep it.
What a hit parade Tektronix, Systron Donner, Wavetek, Sorenson, Hewlett
Packard all of it gone! It pains me now to go to work for such a bunch
of narrow minded brain dead "Let's do Six Sigma and we will be so much
more efficient" clueless management turds!!! How can you be more
efficient when there is no test equipment to use/borrow. WABTEC, as
a company you blow!!! Just keep all those circuit boards being designed
and built in India and China while your locomotives sit dead on a siding
with faulty electronics. I hope to God EMD becomes a key player again
but I think Caterpillar is even stupider than WABTEC if that is humanly
possible!!!

I used to work at a place that made simulators of various types of mining & industrial equipment.
To that end, we purchased a lot of OEM equipment from the "majors"  in those fields.

On one batch of "multifunction switches" (the ones that mount on steering columns) from Caterpillar, around 20% were faulty. so I fear you may be right about that company.
To us, it cost us the time of a Tech & some assemblers to semi-tear down the simulator & refit a good switch, but to someone in the real industry, it could mean a serious loss.

PS: Don't ask why we didn't check the switches on arrival----I haven't worked that out, myself.
Suffice it to say that my suggestion to do that was brushed aside, so it's not only large companies that are dysfunctional!

[TimFox]

I remember an administrative assistant getting permission to “discard the old magazines” and throwing out the technical journals that were owned by one of the senior scientists.

[mawyatt]

Don,

A large technology company decided to get out of the RFIC area about 15 years ago, we hired a previous senior IC designer that worked there (she was told about us and didn't want to stay up north). This company had well over $10M of new (some still boxed) Agilent, Tektronix, Fluke, R&S equipment crushed on-site 

The management folks had determined that destroying the equipment was better than donating to a university, or selling as "scrap"

This reminds me of watching a video of new cars being driven into a massive crushing machine and crushed. They had been exposed to salt water by a hurricane and all were destroyed because the car company didn't want the liability of water damaged vehicles, so just destroyed them all!!

Best,
 

[wraper]

This reminds me of watching a video of new cars being driven into a massive crushing machine and crushed. They had been exposed to salt water by a hurricane and all were destroyed because the car company didn't want the liability of water damaged vehicles, so just destroyed them all!!

This is something completely different. And IMHO rightfully done so, selling cars which were exposed to water is evil by itself, salt water propels it to a whole next level.

[filssavi]

Usually this shit happens because of bureaucracy.

Basically there are no procedures (as in paper/electronic forms and peoples deputized to handle them and sign them) to handle giving away decommisioned stuff etc, so it is not done.
I know it is stupid but almost nobody will assume the responsibility of giving you the green light as there could be legal ramification (ITAR controlled/dual use devices, licensing terms, etc.) .

As for why no procedures are put in place to handle the situation, that has to do with the amount of (internal) political capital needed to affect such changes; this can't be underestimated, as many departments with conflicting requirements (engineers not wanting to deal with useless paper and forms, admin staff usually not wanting to work any more than strictly necessary to keep the business out of bankruptcy etc.).

All for something that adds no value to the company bottom line. that equipment even if still potentially useful to hobbyists is junk to the company if it is not used to make money.

IMO the best/most viable strategy is to just befriend the peoples that are in charge with the dumpsters so that they let you know when something is scheduled to move out.

In all I'm not saying that this is right, just that there are legitimate reasons why this happens, and usually is only in big companies (as in more than a couple of levels of hierarchy between workers and C level personel) and not in small businneses

[KevinA]

I was made redundant a number of years ago, to be replaced by two youngsters who swapped panels/chassis - no more out of warranty repairs for their large customer base.

The guy put in charge of the service division was a used car salesman, and the two youngsters had no idea what any of my equipment was used for.


Into the skip went a G-Tem cell, spectrum analyser, biconical aerial, magnetic test coils etc, and about £400k of spare parts. Well, none of them knew how to repair to component level.


My biggest regret was when I contacted them a year or so later to ask about my set of standard and high speed Teac test cassettes, in a mahogany case. We didn't know what they were, there was no music on them, so they were thrown.

Kevin

[langwadt]

Don,

A large technology company decided to get out of the RFIC area about 15 years ago, we hired a previous senior IC designer that worked there (she was told about us and didn't want to stay up north). This company had well over $10M of new (some still boxed) Agilent, Tektronix, Fluke, R&S equipment crushed on-site 

The management folks had determined that destroying the equipment was better than donating to a university, or selling as "scrap"

This reminds me of watching a video of new cars being driven into a massive crushing machine and crushed. They had been exposed to salt water by a hurricane and all were destroyed because the car company didn't want the liability of water damaged vehicles, so just destroyed them all!!

Best,
 

destroying the cars meant they could write them off as a loss, so they'll save some money in tax/ get the insurance 
and will not have the bad PR or other issues from cars rusting apart later

same for the gear, destroy it and take the tax break instead of dealing with the paper work of selling/donating and then it's done with and they'll never heard about it again

[robca]

To be honest, there can actually be good reasons to destroy equipment instead of letting people rummage and get what they want, especially in bigger companies

The main reason is that, in order to be able to write off the value of the devices (and be able to use that to offset gains somewhere else in the business), a company needs a receipt from an approved recycler/disposer.

Secondary reason is that the devices might be old enough to have leaded solder, and without actual proof that those devices were properly disposed of, a company might be liable (like a company that dumps solvents on a drain to avoid costs)

Also, probably not as much a concern for measurement devices as computers, confidential data on devices might require a disposal company to certify that everything has been erased properly

When I was working for one of the biggest software multinationals, the computers/laptops that were too old to be used daily, had to be disposed of thru the proper channels and if anyone wanted to buy back their laptop/PC, they had to go thru that third party which would ensure everything was properly scrubbed from the HD and any damaged equipment recycled according to environmental rules (which offered special deals for employees, but still charged a lot more than the "free" you could get if you simply took it home.Incidentally, simply taking home your old laptop without properly disposing of, could be considered ground for dismissal)

And, yes, wasteful and bad for the planet, but it makes sense from a legal liability and tax optimization point of view

[langwadt]

To be honest, there can actually be good reasons to destroy equipment instead of letting people rummage and get what they want, especially in bigger companies

The main reason is that, in order to be able to write off the value of the devices (and be able to use that to offset gains somewhere else in the business), a company needs a receipt from an approved recycler/disposer.

Secondary reason is that the devices might be old enough to have leaded solder, and without actual proof that those devices were properly disposed of, a company might be liable (like a company that dumps solvents on a drain to avoid costs)

Also, probably not as much a concern for measurement devices as computers, confidential data on devices might require a disposal company to certify that everything has been erased properly

When I was working for one of the biggest software multinationals, the computers/laptops that were too old to be used daily, had to be disposed of thru the proper channels and if anyone wanted to buy back their laptop/PC, they had to go thru that third party which would ensure everything was properly scrubbed from the HD and any damaged equipment recycled according to environmental rules (which offered special deals for employees, but still charged a lot more than the "free" you could get if you simply took it home.Incidentally, simply taking home your old laptop without properly disposing of, could be considered ground for dismissal)

And, yes, wasteful and bad for the planet, but it makes sense from a legal liability and tax optimization point of view

an employee getting an old computer or other stuff for free or very low price could also easily become a tax issue

[SilverSolder]

Basically, it's bad for the economy if cheap goods "leak out" as scrap, instead of someone buying something...  so, large corporations have policies against it.  It applies to tools, spare parts, anything really. Employees have been known to get in serious trouble for taking stuff that they thought worthless/being recycled.

[Rerouter]

Fun stuff like value of the goods being devalued to be 0, yet if an employee wants it, clearly that value is incorrect, they can't sell its, its meant to cost $0, if they give it away, then is that abuse of an employee for dumping literal garbage on them (again meant to be worthless on paper), or if they see some value, then they would be getting an unfair bonus by means of physical goods, how do they quantify that to make fair to other employees?

I can see why larger companies face these issues, I wonder if the loop hole would be getting it written off to $1 instead of 0,

[james_s]

I seriously wish it was possible to send the people who authorize this sort of thing to the crusher in place of the gear. The world would be a better place. I refuse to give a dime to any company I hear of doing this sort of thing, it's one of the reasons I almost exclusively buy used gear.

[T3sl4co1l]

I wonder if it would be a useful tactic to switch it around: "You can pay me to dispose of this equipment, here are my credentials, it will be done in full compliance with environmental requirements, and I'll gladly undercut the service you currently contract to."

I suppose it falls apart if the management in question is serious about those credentials, and obtaining them for the given locale is arbitrarily difficult...

Tim

[srb1954]

Another example of idiotic management:
One company I worked at the divisional manager complained that the test laboratory looked untidy when he was showing visitors through the plant. So the laboratory manager at the end of the week tore down all the test set-ups that the design engineers had spent all week setting up and put all the equipment neatly back on the shelves. The design engineers would arrive back on Monday morning to continue testing and would have to start all over again restoring up their complex test set-ups.