Respect!

So, I confess, I'm one of those people who get really irritated when I can't connect to the internet, or it's terrible laggy. I know no one wishes it to happen but I'll just whine anyway. But after today, I've a new found respect for the people who try to get it up :P So... I'll umm. Think about the people working to fix it, who are more bothered at it than I am (since all I need to do is wait) whenever I am feeling annoyed by it.

Actually, this was a really technical class, and I was really lost. Seems like some programmers were lost also, haha. So... but something that I remember that I thought was quite interesting was when he said when things start to get slow/ go wrong, some people like to just throw more bandwidth (?) (forgive me for phrasing it really awkwardly and using the wrong words) and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Reminds me a lot about an analogy I read in JIT although this isn't related to inventory :P There is a bit of similarity.

The analogy (by Taiichi Ohno) basically describes the water level in (I think, this is the general idea) a river. Water level represents inventory (I think, though in this case, it can be whatever you have in excess that you throw over to mask the real issue). It looks really calm on the surface, but there are many rocks below which you can't see. These rocks represent problems. Since the water level merely hides them, in order to really solve the problem, you lower the water level and expose them. You solve that, and lower the water level again to expose the next problem to solve. This results in improving the entire system. You don't need so much excess anymore, i.e. you eliminate waste. Which kind of seems like giving more bandwidth (or whatever term is was) to "solve" the problem in an inefficient costly manner. It goes back to the issue of whether you are solving a symptom, or the root cause (okie, so for JIT you are forcing yourself to find the problem, but aiyah, haha, trying to fit the analogy in... but it's a point).

(You can go learn more by googling

JIT, Toyota Production Systems, Lean Manufacturing.

If you are on Chrome, you obviously have Drag and Drop, so just drag and drop what I've kindly typed out)

Speaking of JIT, reminds me of another thing, though this isn't so ops-management related :P A phrase we are all really familiar with by now is "other people don't think like you" and vice versa. As Prof Ben has pointed out, we always try to defend ourselves, rather than trying to see it from the other individual's POV, and it makes us pretty myopic since we may fail to see the big picture. So, back to what I was reminded of. I think some of you may be familiar with the Donna Dubinsky and Apple issue many years back before we were born. I heard this in MNO1001 (which some of ya took before), so I also don't know how accurate it is, but as I was told (and as I've understood):

Donna was a distribution manager at Apple in the 1980s. Steve Jobs wanted to introduce JIT systems (think it was new then) b/c... I guess he thought it was awesome. Unfortunately, the move would take away some of the importance of Donna's role to the manufacturing side, so she was very unhappy. There was a company meeting, and she told them she thought it was a bad idea, and that she was not on board (think Prof Lehman also said she said she'll quit).

Okies, so Prof Lehman was telling us that Donna was probably grieving over the loss of something that is so important to her, and that managers we have to empathize that such reactions are normal. (True, but actually that isn't what I wanted to say. HAHA, but it's a good point, so I added it in) Moving on, Donna (who later went on to found Handspring) said in later interviews that she was biased in hindsight, and JIT was actually good for Apple. This story is related to change, but the the takeaway I wanted to say is applicable to many situations. THE WORLD DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU/ME/etc. And, look at the big picture.

(I can't find a nice story online, but there are a few cases and such, just search

donna dubinsky apple steve jobs

drag and drop to Google)

Thanks for reading, hope I didn't sound too confusing!

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Ooh, food for thought, the title of that section was something like

"Why are the most competent the most resistant?" or something

since this class is full of really competent people, I thought I'd add that since it's pretty relevant. Though I don't mean to imply that there are people who don't listen properly in this class. I'm just sleepy and posting something random ((: