Sadly Larry, it's worse.
The company I work as contract for is now back to "lean manufacturing"
(aka cut costs any way you can, reguardless of the results) from Six
Sigma. Neither system will do anything but fix operations that
actually MAKE something (plastic, ball bearings, fittings, parts,
etc.). NONE of the statistical process control tools have any other
applications, and I've yet to see them applied to anything but people's
behavior, the one thing that statistical process control tools will not
ever help with.
The old "MBA" was intended for management tool training for well
experienced people as they moved beyond the immediate job supervision
point, and in the "old days" if you didn't have 10 years of low level
supervisory or direct manufacturing experience, you could not get into
the program. Today, it's all about three piece suit and
pseudo-statistical mumbo-jumbo with some odd ends of statistics tossed
in (and yes, so far as I know, all the "business cases" are still made
up). My brother took a manufacturing management course a few years
back as part of his associates in manufacturing engineering, and they
were having the students average the time it took for machine tools to
perform sequential operations in order to find the "mean" process time.
Utter and complete bafflegab, the mean time is the process that takes
the longest, as it won't change. Complete disassociation of
statistical math from statistical theory......
The current MBA isn't worth the paper it's printed on, if you ask me.
There doesn't seem to be any requirement that the recipients of said
degree APPLY any of the stuff I know is in the textbooks!
Or as my sister says these days, "human nature, what are you going to
do?"
Makes me so mad I could spit -- I've given up trying to explain
anything to my current boss, she just turns to the high school graduate
and asks him and blows me off.
Peter
