On Fri, 02 Jun 2006 02:41:45 GMT, "Edwin Pawlowski" wrote:


wrote in message

Have an MBA myself, and work for a manufacturer that employs almost a
third of a million people.

Not a day goes by that I don't want to bitch-slap fully half my
company's product planners.

I don't really have a point here, other than I guess to say not all
MBAs are bad people, Swingman. Although I was a very messy baby...
;-)

Right, like lawyers, it is the 98% of them that give the other 2% a bad
reputation. Too many people that have great book learning have never had
any practical experience. Some of the blame is to the companies that give
them a nice office and neglect to give them a few weeks on the factory floor
to see how things are really made.


It needs to go beyond that; they need to be made to actually *use* the
things they are building -- to the point that their livelihood or at least
comfort depends upon the product. You can make absolute crap buildable and
a pleasure for the folks on the factory floor -- it's the end user who pays
the ultimate price for so-called "value engineering"

It's not just machinery: "Modern Marvels" had an episode on Coffee. The
part I saw was talking about how after the original founders of Maxwell
House, Folgers, and Hills Brothers retired and left the business to MBA's,
the MBA's started blending more and more of the low-cost Robusta coffee
beans with their product. One of the show's commentators made the comment,
"basically people were drinking swill".


I could go on for hours with real life examples of that sort of thing and
no, it does not have to be an MBA, just a person with no "practical"
education. You know you are in trouble when a conversation starts out with
"on paper this will . . . . . ".



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If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

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