Memo To Corporate
As round after round of layoffs continued, our ability to meet product deadlines was significantly degraded. For those of us who remained employed our jobs rapidly became more stressful. Instead of doing our own primary work we also had more and more responsibility piled on our shoulders because there was no one else around. Instead of performing one peron's workload you might find yourself doing the work of four, six, or ten employees who had been eliminated.
Instrument quality continued to plunge and angry customer complaints continued to come in each month with more frequency. A major factor in decreased instrument reliability was the workmanship performed by the Malay. Part of it was due to cultural issues: they tell instructors what they want to hear rather than the truth and they don't ask questions when learning on the job because to ask a question is to show your stupidity. They'd rather wreck stuff and look really stupid than ask a question about an aspect of the job that might prevent dumb mistakes from ever happening. The other part of the problem is entirely our fault. US managers were in such a psychotic rush to send our manufacturing overseas that they failed to fully implement the Malaysian operation with necessary tooling, supplies, and support. Corporate totally dropped the ball.
When visiting US managers toured Malaysian divisions, Malay employees were instructed by their managers not to talk to the Americans. Malay managers did their best to wine and dine visiting Stateside managers keeping them busy with lavish meetings and off-site meals at restaurants so they wouldn't have much of an opportunity to observe what was going on there. Their plan seemed to work quite well with keeping corporate in the dark, but they didn't really have to put much effort into the smokescreen.
The situation finally came to a head when clueless managers who didn't understand why things were going so poorly with boxes produced in Malaysia invited one of our top technicians to write a report based on his experiences working in Malaysia with our employees there. This individual whom I will refer to only as "J" is a highly respected and extremely intelligent electronic technician with decades of hands-on experience. He could easily be an engineer. J accepted corporate's invite and wrote a very detailed, thoughtful letter concerning these serious issues. Remember that J was asked to write to corporate with his opinions and observations rather than coming off half-cocked, from out of nowhere. With his permission I have decided to make his letter public here however please note I have removed any identifying information such as product specific model numbers, employee's names, company divisions, etc.
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There is no culture for microwave in Malaysia. Every engineer and technician that I talked to told me that the only training they had came from a few on-site classes. There are no journeymen, much less experts or masters. They are still struggling with the basics and have no mentors to turn to.
Engineers and management have no knowledge of the applications of the instrument and no knowledge of our customers. Their engineers were trained on the individual pieces of the box, they did not spend any time learning how to use it. They know nothing about our customers; their buying habits, their requirements, their applications or even the applications that are loaded into the box.
Everything that they have learned came from production, they have no concept of the box as a system or the work that R&D has put into the design. Engineers are brought over here and trained mostly on the analog aspects of the individual boards. They barely even know about the RF aspects or how the circuits work together. They don't know about all of the work that is done on grounding and shielding for EMI/EMC, the work that has gone into the box for airflow / thermal issues, or even the safety issues. They do not know anything about our firmware and almost none of them even know anything about the cal arrays or how they are applied and what affects they have.
They have no environmental lab, they have an oven and a vibration table. This barely qualifies them as being able to do MiniRel testing, there is no way they can qualify a design or changes to a design. There is nothing for radiated or conducted emissions / susceptibility, nothing for electrical safety or transients, nothing for long term reliability / strife.
They don't understand microwave connectors and adapters and the importance they play in making good measurements. There was not a single cleaning kit or torque wrench at the cal stations when I arrived. They were using vise-grips! We set up an interim connector care class but it is not sufficient. Along the same lines, they do not have soldering classes. In the US, both of these classes are documented in our ISO process.
They have very few folks who can access, much less use proficiently, many of the tools that we use in production or rely heavily on during the design and NPI (New Product Introduction) phase of an instrument. They are starting to learn NextGen and PADB, which are great for production metrics, but they know nothing about EEDP or Mentor. The engineers can't use them and the technicians are forbidden by their IT dept. There is no way than could possibly have ER if they can't even get schematics, much less go into a board's design layout and look at trace routings.
They have no labstock to speak of, they are working on this but what they have is a joke and it is still so new that most folks do not know that such a thing exists. How can an engineer be expected to solve part problems if he can't breadboard? Their "hot" process means they can get parts in three weeks. Normal process takes six or more weeks. Just in the Sources area, they have hundreds of dog boards. I asked someone to count, they gave up at 178 of just one board! I'll bet that many of these are dog boards simply because a technician could not get the part that they felt was the problem.
The folks over there do not have the tools to do their jobs. I'm talking about expensed items that should be considered as consumable and would need a regular supply. While my team was there, we had 14 people sharing a $2 torx driver. Every time I wanted to troubleshoot an instrument, I had to go find the tech who had THE adapter and the tech who had THE cable and the tech who had THE scope probe, the tech who had THE wrench, etc. These things are so precious there that they are kept locked up by their individual owners. They have to be locked up because they are so scarce. The list includes hand tools, test accessories, test adapters, test cables, etc. Often, because they don't have the right adapters, they put four, five or six together to end up with something that will work and since they don't understand, they don't know how this compromises their measurement integrity. I am not sure that the managers there understand that these things wear out or get broken no matter how carefully they are used. There was one board inspection scope (Mantis) and two soldering irons (with one set of mostly broken or inappropriate tips) for the department.
They have excellent training but they don't encourage learning. I've looked at some of the class notes for their training and some of it is the kind of stuff I would have killed for as a technician in the US. The problem is that the classes are often mandatory and most training they receive is very product specific. They are largely discouraged from learning anything outside of the immediate scope of their jobs. I would rank almost every one of their techs as a level 94. They certainly have some sharp, motivated people, they just have very little experience. They probably have the same distribution of excellent-to-bad techs that the US has, but no availability of mentors. The skills and broadband knowledge that NPI techs need to have would be almost impossible to develop under the rigorous control of their system. This is one area where there truly is a cultural difference (that term seems to be used as a smoke screen more often than not). The various cultural groups generally do not socialize and do not form the tech-engineer relationships across these boundaries.
Many engineers and technicians were dissatisfied with their jobs and indicated to me that they would move on when the opportunity arose. They are very cognizant of what is happening in the US and firmly believe that the same thing will happen to them: their jobs will be transferred to China and they will be let go. The engineer's dissatisfaction stems from overwork (they are expected to work 60+ hours per week), pay (this relates to the 60+ hours, techs get overtime, so they can make more than an engineer who is working more hours), and the fact that they spend a lot of their time making spreadsheets on production metrics. Several engineers stated that they wanted to do engineering, not spreadsheets. They also said that they did not go to school for microwave (they couldn't, its not taught over there) and they would move to a job that allowed them to work in the discipline that they chose and studied.
The techs were dissatisfied with the inequities in the system, the micro-management of their jobs, and management's lack of understanding of their job's technical requirements. They said that they were expected to fix X amount of boards per day, it didn't matter that one person was working on a simple analog board and another was working on a complex RF board or a CPU. The inequities that they spoke of were cultural, real or perceived, it was enough to make them state that they will leave. A few microwave companies are moving into Penang (Mini-Circuits is there) and apparently microwave experience at Bill and Dave's is a magic word.
This list could go on for a while and there is more to my story and I could cite more examples on every issue. The engineers that I spoke with were all scared and felt like they were already in over their heads on both workload and work experience. I don't think that they can handle 80-90% of our volume and they are not ready for ER. Direct launches of NPIs is going to be a huge challenge and they simply do not have the experience or the tools in place to be successful yet. It could happen, but you better be prepared to throw schedules away. We often get behind schedule on NPIs Stateside and we have experienced NPI techs, production engineers and the availability of the R&D and firmware folks to come on-site to help solve problems. Newly hired technicians and untrained engineers in Malaysia will not be able to do the job on anybody's schedule. Having done many Pilot runs and product transfers from division to division, I was surprised at how poorly our process with Malaysia worked. There was a number of things that US and Malaysia could have done and I plan to make them known or work on these myself.
I think the following list would have a high impact on improving Malaysia's short and long term success.
1. Have marketing give them some classes on our customers and their applications. I think they have too much of a high-volume mentality, they think that if our customers get a bad instrument, they'll just throw it away and order another!
2. Give them the money they need to properly outfit their technicians, assemblers and test processes. Hand tools, adapters, soldering tools, etc
3. Revise the training plan, their techs and engineers should be here during prototype builds, not after Pilot. (and don't count them as NPI resources, they will be in training)
4. Take a close look at their staffing levels, you can not use the assumption that their efficiencies are the same as Stateside. Look at the first run of xxxxx, six weeks, six boxes into FGI, 25 dogboards.
5. The division model should help us on this; the linkage between US production and Malaysia production needs to be tighter than it is. We need better communication, mostly in the US-to-Malaysia direction.
6. Have someone explain to IT in Malaysia (or wherever it is) that we build instruments and they have got to stop creating roadblocks to the tools that they need.
7. We had 2 engineers, 6 US techs and 6 Malaysia techs sharing two workbenches. Floor space was not an issue, but work benches and equipment was. Transfers and product launches need a dedicated area with sufficient equipment to do the job.
8. Look at employee retention / job satisfaction issues.
Instrument quality continued to plunge and angry customer complaints continued to come in each month with more frequency. A major factor in decreased instrument reliability was the workmanship performed by the Malay. Part of it was due to cultural issues: they tell instructors what they want to hear rather than the truth and they don't ask questions when learning on the job because to ask a question is to show your stupidity. They'd rather wreck stuff and look really stupid than ask a question about an aspect of the job that might prevent dumb mistakes from ever happening. The other part of the problem is entirely our fault. US managers were in such a psychotic rush to send our manufacturing overseas that they failed to fully implement the Malaysian operation with necessary tooling, supplies, and support. Corporate totally dropped the ball.
When visiting US managers toured Malaysian divisions, Malay employees were instructed by their managers not to talk to the Americans. Malay managers did their best to wine and dine visiting Stateside managers keeping them busy with lavish meetings and off-site meals at restaurants so they wouldn't have much of an opportunity to observe what was going on there. Their plan seemed to work quite well with keeping corporate in the dark, but they didn't really have to put much effort into the smokescreen.
The situation finally came to a head when clueless managers who didn't understand why things were going so poorly with boxes produced in Malaysia invited one of our top technicians to write a report based on his experiences working in Malaysia with our employees there. This individual whom I will refer to only as "J" is a highly respected and extremely intelligent electronic technician with decades of hands-on experience. He could easily be an engineer. J accepted corporate's invite and wrote a very detailed, thoughtful letter concerning these serious issues. Remember that J was asked to write to corporate with his opinions and observations rather than coming off half-cocked, from out of nowhere. With his permission I have decided to make his letter public here however please note I have removed any identifying information such as product specific model numbers, employee's names, company divisions, etc.
----------
There is no culture for microwave in Malaysia. Every engineer and technician that I talked to told me that the only training they had came from a few on-site classes. There are no journeymen, much less experts or masters. They are still struggling with the basics and have no mentors to turn to.
Engineers and management have no knowledge of the applications of the instrument and no knowledge of our customers. Their engineers were trained on the individual pieces of the box, they did not spend any time learning how to use it. They know nothing about our customers; their buying habits, their requirements, their applications or even the applications that are loaded into the box.
Everything that they have learned came from production, they have no concept of the box as a system or the work that R&D has put into the design. Engineers are brought over here and trained mostly on the analog aspects of the individual boards. They barely even know about the RF aspects or how the circuits work together. They don't know about all of the work that is done on grounding and shielding for EMI/EMC, the work that has gone into the box for airflow / thermal issues, or even the safety issues. They do not know anything about our firmware and almost none of them even know anything about the cal arrays or how they are applied and what affects they have.
They have no environmental lab, they have an oven and a vibration table. This barely qualifies them as being able to do MiniRel testing, there is no way they can qualify a design or changes to a design. There is nothing for radiated or conducted emissions / susceptibility, nothing for electrical safety or transients, nothing for long term reliability / strife.
They don't understand microwave connectors and adapters and the importance they play in making good measurements. There was not a single cleaning kit or torque wrench at the cal stations when I arrived. They were using vise-grips! We set up an interim connector care class but it is not sufficient. Along the same lines, they do not have soldering classes. In the US, both of these classes are documented in our ISO process.
They have very few folks who can access, much less use proficiently, many of the tools that we use in production or rely heavily on during the design and NPI (New Product Introduction) phase of an instrument. They are starting to learn NextGen and PADB, which are great for production metrics, but they know nothing about EEDP or Mentor. The engineers can't use them and the technicians are forbidden by their IT dept. There is no way than could possibly have ER if they can't even get schematics, much less go into a board's design layout and look at trace routings.
They have no labstock to speak of, they are working on this but what they have is a joke and it is still so new that most folks do not know that such a thing exists. How can an engineer be expected to solve part problems if he can't breadboard? Their "hot" process means they can get parts in three weeks. Normal process takes six or more weeks. Just in the Sources area, they have hundreds of dog boards. I asked someone to count, they gave up at 178 of just one board! I'll bet that many of these are dog boards simply because a technician could not get the part that they felt was the problem.
The folks over there do not have the tools to do their jobs. I'm talking about expensed items that should be considered as consumable and would need a regular supply. While my team was there, we had 14 people sharing a $2 torx driver. Every time I wanted to troubleshoot an instrument, I had to go find the tech who had THE adapter and the tech who had THE cable and the tech who had THE scope probe, the tech who had THE wrench, etc. These things are so precious there that they are kept locked up by their individual owners. They have to be locked up because they are so scarce. The list includes hand tools, test accessories, test adapters, test cables, etc. Often, because they don't have the right adapters, they put four, five or six together to end up with something that will work and since they don't understand, they don't know how this compromises their measurement integrity. I am not sure that the managers there understand that these things wear out or get broken no matter how carefully they are used. There was one board inspection scope (Mantis) and two soldering irons (with one set of mostly broken or inappropriate tips) for the department.
They have excellent training but they don't encourage learning. I've looked at some of the class notes for their training and some of it is the kind of stuff I would have killed for as a technician in the US. The problem is that the classes are often mandatory and most training they receive is very product specific. They are largely discouraged from learning anything outside of the immediate scope of their jobs. I would rank almost every one of their techs as a level 94. They certainly have some sharp, motivated people, they just have very little experience. They probably have the same distribution of excellent-to-bad techs that the US has, but no availability of mentors. The skills and broadband knowledge that NPI techs need to have would be almost impossible to develop under the rigorous control of their system. This is one area where there truly is a cultural difference (that term seems to be used as a smoke screen more often than not). The various cultural groups generally do not socialize and do not form the tech-engineer relationships across these boundaries.
Many engineers and technicians were dissatisfied with their jobs and indicated to me that they would move on when the opportunity arose. They are very cognizant of what is happening in the US and firmly believe that the same thing will happen to them: their jobs will be transferred to China and they will be let go. The engineer's dissatisfaction stems from overwork (they are expected to work 60+ hours per week), pay (this relates to the 60+ hours, techs get overtime, so they can make more than an engineer who is working more hours), and the fact that they spend a lot of their time making spreadsheets on production metrics. Several engineers stated that they wanted to do engineering, not spreadsheets. They also said that they did not go to school for microwave (they couldn't, its not taught over there) and they would move to a job that allowed them to work in the discipline that they chose and studied.
The techs were dissatisfied with the inequities in the system, the micro-management of their jobs, and management's lack of understanding of their job's technical requirements. They said that they were expected to fix X amount of boards per day, it didn't matter that one person was working on a simple analog board and another was working on a complex RF board or a CPU. The inequities that they spoke of were cultural, real or perceived, it was enough to make them state that they will leave. A few microwave companies are moving into Penang (Mini-Circuits is there) and apparently microwave experience at Bill and Dave's is a magic word.
This list could go on for a while and there is more to my story and I could cite more examples on every issue. The engineers that I spoke with were all scared and felt like they were already in over their heads on both workload and work experience. I don't think that they can handle 80-90% of our volume and they are not ready for ER. Direct launches of NPIs is going to be a huge challenge and they simply do not have the experience or the tools in place to be successful yet. It could happen, but you better be prepared to throw schedules away. We often get behind schedule on NPIs Stateside and we have experienced NPI techs, production engineers and the availability of the R&D and firmware folks to come on-site to help solve problems. Newly hired technicians and untrained engineers in Malaysia will not be able to do the job on anybody's schedule. Having done many Pilot runs and product transfers from division to division, I was surprised at how poorly our process with Malaysia worked. There was a number of things that US and Malaysia could have done and I plan to make them known or work on these myself.
I think the following list would have a high impact on improving Malaysia's short and long term success.
1. Have marketing give them some classes on our customers and their applications. I think they have too much of a high-volume mentality, they think that if our customers get a bad instrument, they'll just throw it away and order another!
2. Give them the money they need to properly outfit their technicians, assemblers and test processes. Hand tools, adapters, soldering tools, etc
3. Revise the training plan, their techs and engineers should be here during prototype builds, not after Pilot. (and don't count them as NPI resources, they will be in training)
4. Take a close look at their staffing levels, you can not use the assumption that their efficiencies are the same as Stateside. Look at the first run of xxxxx, six weeks, six boxes into FGI, 25 dogboards.
5. The division model should help us on this; the linkage between US production and Malaysia production needs to be tighter than it is. We need better communication, mostly in the US-to-Malaysia direction.
6. Have someone explain to IT in Malaysia (or wherever it is) that we build instruments and they have got to stop creating roadblocks to the tools that they need.
7. We had 2 engineers, 6 US techs and 6 Malaysia techs sharing two workbenches. Floor space was not an issue, but work benches and equipment was. Transfers and product launches need a dedicated area with sufficient equipment to do the job.
8. Look at employee retention / job satisfaction issues.
posted by factory_peasant at 12:08 PM
4 Comments:
definitley. speling is tuff.
I remember that letter, and if I have the right guy in mind they never fired him. He knew way more about the NPI instruments than any engineer there. They would have been been screwed if he left.
TC
J is still there.
wad- thanks i'll fix that up today. btw i think you have an imposter on the loose. i guess this means you're famous now. congratulations!
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