Profiles in Delusion

Unreasonable demands warrant blunt responses.

A young man called me. He didn’t want to call me. It was Friday. Friday is for vanishing, not confrontation. He persisted throughout the preceding week in sending emails, hoping someone on our end would engage. No one did. Not our customer service manager. Not our operations manager. Not our business/office manager. Without exception, all directed the young man to me.

Options reduced to one, he finally capitulated and called me. He was audibly nervous. He talked fast. When I was allowed the (rare) opportunity to reply, he cut me off and talked over my answer. The ensuing word jumble accomplished nothing. In exasperation, I finally admonished him, “You know, studies show that a conversation works optimally when the first party speaks and the second listens, after which the roles reverse. Can we try that as an experiment in achieving better communication?” He seemed reluctant. He kept on speaking nervously. Clearly, he did not appear comfortable with the message he was assigned to deliver.

That message was this: He wanted more time to pay us. More accurately, Higher Authority was dictating more time. Blame one customer: They wanted payment terms extended from the conventional net 30 to their requested net 90. Ominously, the request stated that their customer was expecting uniform acquiescence to their grand idea from all suppliers to “maintain this growing partnership ….”

Partnership. Growing.

As in bank account. Better their interest earned than ours, goes the mindset.

Bowdlerize (transitive verb): to modify by abridging, simplifying, or distorting in style or content.

Like distorting the content or style of conduct in a business relationship by hanging support and partnership on a flimsy dependency on extortionate credit terms. Boeing did that to its suppliers. That worked out well.

The irony is that the company’s owner, a billionaire, has ample assets at his disposal. Times are irrefutably not tight, cash flow-wise, for the OEM. The proprietor simply wants to hold on to his money, as much as he can, for as long as he can, because he can. Net worth confers a license to bowdlerize.

And screw the rest of us.

Our reluctant emissary cleared his throat like a nervous tic. He coughed a lot (email is so much easier and more impersonal), discomforted by his desire to deliver the message in hit-and-run fashion, obtain assent without protest and begin his weekend, secure in the knowledge he could run up his “Mission Accomplished” banner to his customer in time for Monday morning coffee, claim his Attaboy, stabilize his blood pressure and go on living.

Between throat clearings, his argument for 90-day terms rested on some imagined industry standard (a preemptive search of IPC standards revealed no such thing). To confirm, we weren’t looking at – and he wasn’t citing – the wrong set of standards. We also checked subclauses of AS9100, section 8.4.1, in which supplier risks must be managed, such as the risk of default. A cursory review confirmed the relevant sections of AS9100 say nothing about payment terms.

Finally absolved of his burdens, we had the message, and it was our turn to respond. So I did, quite simply, restating that our terms are net 30. There was silence at the other end, then a renewed attempt to argue that they were merely adhering to something euphemistically called “industry standards” (knowledge of which, evidently, remained hidden prior to its mandate from their customer). I requested he present evidence of those standards. No answer. I reiterated in as professional a tone as I could muster that we believed net 30 was reasonable and customary, that we paid our suppliers in 30 days, and that we stood by those terms. He countered by arguing we were the only supplier to reject his proposal. I added we were comfortable being a party of one, and that numbers massed to one side of an issue did not always correlate with its correctness.

Our discussion clearly over, his mission unsuccessful, my interlocutor’s coughing intensified. This was not going according to plan. He promised to pass our response on to his customer. I acknowledged that I assumed he would do so and wished him a good weekend.

And a nice life.

Imagine an employer telling her employees, in peremptory fashion, that because of competitive pressures, industry standards were changing and paydays would now occur only once every 90 days. Imagine. Then ask this: why is delaying payment of one’s obligations considered by some to be “good business” and “standard?” Whose ethics prevail in the minds of those who agree with that statement?

Philosophical ruminations aside, four months later, they’re still paying us in 30 days.

Another young man recently asked me to review his business plan and whether his company’s wares would be worth presenting in a technical forum. He and his startup want to get “more involved” with the industry, given the general prevalence of AI and his startup company’s specific niche. Never mind his questionable judgment (more dubious “good business”) in cozying up to pseudo-luminaries like me.

His deference was flattering just the same. Each of us has their price.

His wares are soft: His algorithm, as best I understand it, monitors shop floor activities using data feeds from closed-circuit cameras, comparing the observed data with “standards” (that name again) to ascertain if employees are working “efficiently” (says who?) and alert management if they are not. Another peel of the AI onion to illustrate how wonderful it is as a technology.

Enmeshed in our everyday lives. How special.

The idea is to provide “game-time” video so that management can review and identify individual inefficiencies in behavior and movement by shop floor personnel, and somehow correct them. The cameras, and the AI they feed, focus exclusively on personnel. No thought of machines. Or their linkages. Or process design. Or appropriateness of materials to the task. Or the interconnectedness of all factors. Or the psychological state of those doing the work. Just personnel efficiency, as the algorithm’s programmer, at the behest of management and the brilliance of my friend’s IP, define it. Product literature boasts that this “Operations Digital Twin” addresses activity objectively, thus enabling swift root cause evaluation and resolution through focused management interventions. All data-driven. All from a distance, with no one-on-one contact. All very clinical; antiseptic, even. What you measure, you manage.

Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for …?

Taylorism?

“Taylorism, also known as Scientific Management: A theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes to management. Its name derives from that of its pioneer, Frederick Winslow Taylor. Tools include the use of time and motion study to standardize repetitive manufacturing practices.” (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

Digital Taylorism.

“Digital Taylorism is based on maximizing efficiency by standardizing and routinizing the tools and techniques for completing each task involved with a given job. Digital Taylorism involves management’s use of technology to monitor workers and make sure they are employing these tools and techniques at a satisfactory level …. Another example of Digital Taylorism being used in the workplace is found in organizations who use surveillance systems to monitor workers and make sure they are on task at all times; the percentage of surveillance being used in the workplace is continually growing.” (Thanks again, Wikipedia.)

That’s what this guy is offering: Production Nirvana in a split screen. In stereotypically amoral, libertarian Silicon Valley style, he’s gung-ho for the coolness, with no consideration for those pesky ethical side effects.

He thinks this is a good thing.

Who provides the objective standards to program the algorithm? Isn’t that decision in itself subjective?

If process automation, a la Industry 4.0, remains the distant goal, aren’t human technicians evolving in their job responsibilities to machine and process maintainers rather than operators? And if that supposition is true, what’s the point of monitoring them? Wouldn’t the data from the machines – designed to regurgitate data upwards and outwards – be sufficient to gauge process efficiency, set KPIs, monitor them and adjust accordingly?

Finally, nothing conveys trust, from management to the workforce, more than a factory floor infested with digital eyeballs, whose expressed purpose is to ensure workers are working up to an unseen, unknown, “objective” standard defined by those looking down through the cameras with a god’s eye view. Lots of negative metaphors to filter through. Sounds like a place to avoid. Unless you’re a union organizer.

So what did I tell him? Present his paper. We live, work and thrive in a marketplace of ideas. Let the audience judge. They’ll tell you what they think. They have standards.

Just brace for the answer.

Robert Boguski is president of Datest Corp. (datest.com); rboguski@datest.com. His column runs bimonthly.