Does Sharing Make for Caring?

"Something it helped make possible was close correlation of employees' effectiveness with their weekly paycheck."

This sounds like another way to indirectly reference piecework. This can be quite counterproductive. When true production is very closely associated with pay, there is generally a tendency to neglect or ignore housekeeping. This will vary with the individual and is not a hard/fast rule, but it generally manifests in one way or another.

"I don't get paid anything to directly help a customer so I won't."
"I don't get paid anything to load/unload a customer so I won't."
"I don't get paid anything to put stock away so I won't."

Let's see how long it takes someone to bring union shops into this discussion.

Those I don't get paid statement are easy.

An unhappy customers don't come back, don't order work to be done. So no one gets paid if there's no work.

If we don't put the stock away it sets on the floor and you have to work around it. How you going to be productive working around and tripping over it.

Same with house keeping. If you have trip over it you can't be as efficient.

I do agree it does have draw backs. As in producing a product that take many employees work hands on to complete. One person being slow can be very disruptive to all those on the line. But then that is what supervision is for. To see the problem and correct it. To place the employees to the best of their skills so they don't slow the production of the product. Or correct the the amount of hands on time the labor details for each person so that there is steady flow.

Another problem you will encounter is work flow and stock levels if there is any sequential machining using different machines. If the first machine in a sequence is slow, subsequent machine operators cannot make their pay through lack of feedstock. If the first machine is faster, work in progress stock (and costs) build up between machines. This consequence can occur at any machine in the sequence, and with all the operators trying to enhance their pay, it will occur somewhere. Changing loading patterns to counter this means downtime due to more machine set ups. Do machine operators lose pay when their machine is not producing during set up? Or are they on an artificial fixed rate, which could lead them to take longer where they can earn more setting up than machining? Most machining operations differ in complexity. Long runs and quick parts change over on some machines will lead to allegations of favouritism and bad blood between workers. Your attempts at closer co-operation could seriously backfire without massive management input.

The reason behind efficient managers and foremen and employees is to produce a product for a profit and their pay will reflect such a development. Good communication is the key and if someone is not operating in such a manner he should be relieved of duty...or counseled to the point of his or her position. Software can play a part but managers should be made aware of the end product and know how to communicate that information down the line.

It used a ship paradigm. The crew of a ship has to be willing to pay attention to how others are doing, and spot and fix problems early; their lives could depend on it.

This is more difficult to implement on land. But it more closely aligns with the truth. In other words, one slow (or worse) worker can bog down the entire organization. We were a school, not a shop (or a ship), but the same basic principles apply to any human group.

This creates a work environment that is more on edge than a lot of people are comfortable with. Particularly when the system includes all of management (which it definitely should!). But if the scene is well-managed, the organization can get tuned up to the point where it performs way above average.

Basic rules for such a system:

It has to be well understood by everyone involved. In other words, it has to be taught to all employees.

It has to include a recourse for wrong calls. A real bad apple in a group will work hard to get others blamed for his own shortcomings. This has to be confronted as a real possibility in such a system, and remedies provided.

The production statistics that the system runs on have to be verifiable. Even if software is used to keep track of production, there needs to be a way to prove that it is doing an accurate job.