I was out at a large computer manufacturer this week, north of Austin, interviewing some of their executive staff on process. It is well known that this company measures everything, and all their decisions are based on those measurements. And that their BPI process (a variant on Six Sigma) creates a virtuous circle of leadership creating new leadership, who are empowered to continuously make improvements.
Through the nearly day long discussions I only saw the two extremes of their processes. The human process of business process improvement, where human to human interaction was highlighted, with little software intervention. And the automation process of system manufacturing where processes between systems were highlighted with little human intervention.
Of course the human process was used to improve the automation process.
If I was to say that the improvement process had 10% technology intervention, I could easily say that the manufacturing process had 10% human intervention.
What I was not shown were processes that live in the middle. Processes that were 50% human, and 50% system. Unfortunately this is were I live, and represents many of the problems I am solving. And seeing how they use technology to manage these processes, if any, is of keen interest to me.
On a personal note, I started my computer career working at small computer clone company in college. I worked my way up from the warehouse through build (order fulfillment), through repair, to sales (and on to my first startup) in just a couple years.
Seeing the manufacturing process automated to the degree it is today made me think what we, when I was building systems for that clone company, could have done if there was a process of process improvement in place.
But in hindsight, as a ragged crew of stoners and slackers working at barely minimum wage, there was little chance we felt the inspiration or empowerment to act on more than a few low hanging opportunities before our buzz wore off the mornings after our sessions of collaborative ideation.
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