Did you see the Job Costing article in TCIA this month? He says big companies can make more money per job if they use crews of two instead of three! WOW! Smart guy for someone who's probably never loaded a single round on a dumptruck.
THIS is what's wrong. Maybe you can use less man hours to do a job with a crew of two... but you're askinbg them to press themselves hard to do it... ask them to do that everyday and you destroy morale, undermine safety, raise contempt for management and pit crews AGAINST salesmen and each other.
Only when it comes to money is it OK to just toss balance and quality of life out the window. Cost accountants have no business dictating or even recommending crew size unless they've worked on a crew for at least a year. Load rounds with two guys, then load'em with three... it's EASY to see why three is better than two.
The crew should be matched to the job but not in such a way that they have to perform above and beyond every day just to meet quota.
That's screwed up and basically amounts to economic extortion... jobs are scarce, lots of companies figure it's OK to overwork and burn people out... "lot's more where THEY came from... just dumb tree guys after all, not smart like us educated types". Supply and demand and all that... the bad economy makes it OK to abuse people. Hell, we should have bad economies more often... I'll bet we can get people to work for a dollar an hour if we keep this up! Think of how many yachts that would buy if every wage EARNER would just work for a dollar less per hour. We can tell'em the economy is THEIR fault and THEY have to tighten THEIR belts so we can all get along. Works every time.
MBA's are the most pathetic business people on the planet. Business isn't about stockholders, that's an aberration born of greed. Companies and business are about people....employees, customers, people that are present, active and actually have an interest OTHER than just money.
The article does have good points and I'm FOR job costing, I had to do a lot of it as an engineer and project manager. Right sizing jobs and focusing on profitable markets for instance... good stuff. ...and it doesn't cost anybody their happiness and love for their work.
But the downsizing the crew thing... that kind of optimization has negative long term implications that don't show up on any financials.
Oh yeah, the reason this is here and not behind the desk is I'm trying to uphold the off-topic thing and because that's the kinda guy Jeff just failed to rep Jesus to. If you haven't been on a crew, don't be telling crews HOW to do anything... you can tell'em WHAT, WHEN, WHY, WHO... but not HOW.
