The Assembly Line Broke Down

I used to work as a Remanufacturing Tech in a factory that shipped rebuilt alternators and starters for automobiles and tractor trailers. The shop’s motto was positively humane: “We put quality first to build the best product at the best price.” We were expected to memorize that motto and deliver it in our own words, whenever asked.

Trouble was, that motto was words only. The factory had no idea what it really meant to say “quality first”. To the big bosses it meant; Do it right the first time, and do it faster than any human being has ever done it before in the history of man-kind. Everything had to be faster, faster, faster. If a job could be done accurately in 60 seconds, we were expected to do it adequately in 30.

There was no mercy offered to us, it was almost like we were slaves except that we were being paid and paid fairly well too. But still, what they were asking was impossible. It simply could not be done. The faster you perform a job, the harder it is to do that job the way it should be done, with care. Nobody dared meet their quota for the day because if you did you knew that the quota would be raised the next day.

Everyone fudged their numbers for that reason. The last five to ten minutes of the day were virtually nothing but play time for a bunch of people scared to death to go over quota. My point here, is that the modern-day idea of an assembly line does not work. Maybe it was a great idea once upon a time, but then stop-watches were born and everything went downhill from there.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome does not have to be a part of every factory worker’s life, but in most cases, it is. I have it in both hands, and I don’t know anyone who works in a factory who doesn’t have it. The reason we all have it is because we are trying to move our hands faster than they were designed to move. We have no choice whatsoever, because we are given none.

Factories need to follow their politically correct mottos more closely, and put their workers first, instead of stacking them somewhere below quantity and quotas. Human beings are organic machines and like any other machine, we break down. We hurt, we get sick. Stuff happens, and the big factories act as though all that can simply be placed on the back burner as irrelevant.

Human pain is not irrelevant and should be a main concern of the managers in charge of the employees. This is how I would run a factory if I were in charge of one. I would listen to my employees and take their opinions to heart. And most importantly, I would allow them to work at a comfortable pace, knowing that the product they were assembling was a good product, well built and built to last. That would be the ideal factory, not this broken down version that always ends up going straight to Mexico.