this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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At my work they are necessary. I'm... I guess middle management, you'd say (supervisor in a shop). Our work changes from day to day, nobody doing the same thing from one day to the next, so there's an upper and middle management brief where they outline all the work for the day, assign tasks to specific shops, give general information to be passed along (upcoming events and reminders), then I take that to my shop to assign individual tasks from our shop's workload.
So I attend two of those daily meetings a day (about 5-10 min each) but they are definitely necessary for us.
If this is the entire meeting, can't they just tell you this in an email, phone call, text message, etc and have you delegate it out to your shop?
I know most of my responses in this thread come across as I'm very anti-meetings, but I feel like if you're going to have a meeting, it needs to be beneficial to everyone. People have to take time out of their day, the meetings never start or end on time, and they generally could have just been an email. If you're just passing along information to specific teams, I don't think a meeting is necessary. There's better and more efficient ways to do things.
Theoretically a group phone call would work, but that would be even more challenging than the meeting. In my shop, I need to know what the other shops are doing to provide personnel if needed, a lot of work is shared between shops, and often plans for the day are not developed until that brief. It's not just my shop directly being assigned work, it's a collaborative meeting.
And the meeting that I lead can't be emails, because we have 2 shared computers for anywhere from 2 to 8 people who will be in the shop any given day (and it takes 5-10 minutes to log onto one of our computers. At least.). And in general we don't want them hanging out on computers, we want them tasked and heading out to work as soon as possible.
All in all, it's 15-20 minutes and gives everyone direction for the day. I haven't come across anyone that has found them to not be worthwhile in my workplace.
This entire process seems like something that should just be automated and would save everyone time in the morning.
I assure you, it is not.
You don't think they have systems to allocate resources across multiple locations?
https://giphy.com/gifs/snl-saturday-night-live-season-47-onyngiYITZiecYsBTj
Look, man, I'm trying to be as polite as possible, but I'm telling you that you have no idea what you're talking about. You're so invested in pidgeon-holing your solution into a problem that doesn't exist because you lack the awareness of a workplace outside of your experience, and refuse to accept such a place could exist.
I absolutely hate wasting time and I am always looking for ways to increase efficiency. I make lists of required tools and consumables for each maintenance card to minimize walking to and from toolboxes and supply. I am constantly seeking out time wasters to remove them, to allow the guys who work for me to focus on their job and get what they need accomplished. I have also worked in my field, in this organization, from the lowest-level worker and every step up to where I am now, for 12 years.
So when I tell you, who don't even know what field I'm in, that you are offering solutions in search of a problem, and that they wouldn't work in my workplace, maybe you should show a tiny bit of humility and think I might know better than you how my own workplace works.
There are systems already created to solve your problem, allocating resources in a shop. Just because you haven't used them in your experience doesn't mean they don't exist 🫣.
I'm not offering solutions in search of problems. I said these daily standup meetings are largely pointless, you said "but my shop needs them to allocate resources!" That's not me searching for a problem. This is literally the perfect job for an automated system. You get rid of any human error as well.
I'm not the person you were replying too but I believe that I work in a similar industry to them. Can I just say that you sound like an asshole with this response?
I work in manufacturing and automation does not yet exist for every job on our floor. Every day is different and people actually need to work as a team in our industry. You may be incapable of team work but some industries/jobs still require it. You may not work in a fast paced environment were requirements (sometimes even regarding people's safety) can change in minutes but some people still do. You may be able to work remotely in your bubble using hands off email leadership that ignores the human element behind the screen but some people are still required to go to work in person and work with other humans face to face.
Telling someone they should layoff everyone by just adding automation is insulting. Telling someone they should be delivering instructions for complex systems, in an industry you clearly know nothing about, over text is asinine. The guy you were talking too is trying to do the best he can to make the people who work for him successful in a low tech enviornment with massive coordination requirements and you think he can be replaced with an automated text message? Fuck you.
I'm not saying lay off the person and replace them with automation. I'm saying if the entire purpose of a meeting is for humans to come together and make decisions about how to delegate resources, well that's a perfect job for a computer to do. It can do it more efficiently and better than any group of humans. If you give a computer a set of requirements to delegate the resources, you don't have to worry about human error there as well.
Nice assumptions about my ability to work as a team though, just because I think we should eliminate pointless meetings 😂. If the person gets back 15-20 minutes every morning, it would allow them to better manage their team instead of sitting in a meeting 😁
It's 2023 you should be using tech to make your lives easier and work more efficiently. Use tech to feed up your time so you can use your big brain and work on more important problems than mundane tasks.
Manager: "Torrential rain at our customers location means we're going to have to move priorities, I just got the email 5 minutes ago."
Sup 1: Our new pioritizes mean we're running the lathe. We cant pivot to project Y because the metal for that was cut incorrectly and the new order is on backorder. We can use that metal to make order K but well have to manually cut it down."
Sup 2: "Tim called out this morning, I can rearrange my department to cover most positions but not that one, can I get John from you to run the lathe? Gary is the most qualified but his sister filed for divorce from Doug on saturday. Doug has to interact with the lathe position all day and itll cause issues."
Sup 1: "I can give you John if I can get Frank from department X to help cover down."
Sup 3: " I can give Frank up but were having a baby shower for Rachel at 1400 and Ill need him back for that."
Sup 1: "Thats fine we have maint scheduled for today well just do that then."
Manager: "Now that we've had our 5 -10 minute start up meeting no one do anything. Lets call the IT guy on the other side of the country who hates meetings and get him to program the details of todays resource allocation into joemos skynet. He says its way more efficient than us talking for 5 fucking minutes at the start of the day. It definitely has a section for you're most experience lathe operators sister is divorcing the forklift driver in another department. Joemo skynet can then text its plan into the ether cause 10% of the floor doesnt even have a working phone number and 99% dont have computer access. Joemo definitely understands the manufacturing industry."
If you know of a good way to automate leading humans out of manufacturing then youll make millions and CEOs will love you. Because if theres one thing computer systems are definitely great at its dealing with completely unique and non black and white information especially without a human having to manually input it.
What are you talking about? A quick three second search shows you these systems already exist and have existed for a long time: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/accounting/manufacturing-resource-planning/#:~:text=The%20term%20manufacturing%20resource%20planning,related%20to%20the%20manufacturing%20process.
You're right, you do need to interact with the system a little bit because it's not "skynet", but it can do all your resources planning and allocation quicker and more efficiently.
It appears that I have struck a nerve saying a simple meeting could be automated.
A computer is good at doing boring, repetitive tasks with whatever rules and logic you tell it to. Let it do what it's good at and give yourself back some time to use your big brain somewhere else.
I also wouldn't rush to make assumptions about people's background on the internet that you know nothing about 🫣.
If you worked in manufacturing then I'm sorry for everyone who had to work with you. I've also used MRP systems and they don't negate the need for stand up meetings. But you clearly don't actually want to understand my point so it seems were at an impasse. Please continue working in IT for all our sakes.
Everyone is being so hostile to saying a meeting could be avoided, but I guess that shows a lot about who those people are 🤣
I'm sorry for everyone who has to work with you and sit through countless pointless meetings that should have been an email.