Applied Taylorism

This is a very funny description of taylorism, I came across it whilst studying for Management and I actually think it's a good description of its application.

"Here is the way in which a literal minded industrial reported on a symphony concert. For considerable periods the four oboe players had nothing to do. The number should be reduced and the work spread more evenly over the whole concert, thus eliminating peaks and valleys of activity. All the twelve violins were playing identical notes, this seems unnecessary duplication. The staff of this section should be drastically cut. If a larger volume of sound is required, it could be obtained by means of electronic apparatus. Much effort was absorbed in the playing of demi-semi-quavers; this seems to be an unnecessary refinement. It is recommended that all notes be rounded up to the nearest semi-quaver. If this were done, it would be possible to use trainees and lower grade operatives more extensively.

There seems to be too much repetiton of some musical passages. Scores should be drastically pruned. No useful purpose is served by repeating on the horns something which has already been handled by the strings. It is estimated that if all redundant passages were eliminated the whole concert time of 2 hours could be reduced to 20 minutes and there would be no need for an intermission. In many cases the operators were using one hand for holding the instrument, whereas the introduction of a fixture would have tendered the idle hand available for other work. Also, it was noted that excessive effort was being used occasionally by the players of wind instruments, whereas one compressor could supply adequate air for all instruments under more accurately controlled conditions.

Finally, obsolence of equipment is another matter into which it is suggested further investigation could be made, as it was reported in the programme that the leading violonist's instrument was already several hundred years old. If normal depreciation schedules have been applied, the value of this instrument would have been reduced to zero and purchase of more modern equipment could then have been considered."

Genial!

Laws of project management

This is the way my precious Operations Management textbook was describing Project Management. Enjoy.

1. No major project is ever installed on time, within budget or with the same staff that started it. Yours will not be the first.

2. Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete, then they remain at 90% complete forever.

3. One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let you avoid the embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs.

4. When things are going well, something will go wrong. When things just cannot get any worse, they will. When things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.

5. If the project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.

6. No system is ever completely debugged. Attempts to debug a system inevitably introduce new bugs that are even harder to find.

7. A carelessly planned project will take 3 times longer to complete than expected, a carefully planned project will take only twice as long.

8. Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly manifests their lack of progress.

(Slack et al, Operations Management, 7th edition)

First day @Damen Shipyard and a little bit about EU competences

8 key competences included in the Framework on key competences of the EU:

-communication in the mother tongue
-communication in a foreign language
-mathematical literacy and basic competences in science&technology
-digital competence
-learning to learn
-interpersonal&civic competences
-entrepreneurship
-cultural expression