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To: edamo who wrote (127868)	5/22/1999 6:53:00 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

~OT~ For some new insights on Net Perceptions (NETP) check out the following post: Message 9688595 Best Regards, Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ IMO, as DELL starts to deal with more and more stakeholders online, personalization technology will increase in importance. It's ideal when a website can help you find what you are looking for quickly and efficiently. This helps increase satisfaction and customer loyalty. Of course it would be VERY powerful if a website could recommend (relevant) things to you that you would not normally consider. This would be great for all stakeholders -- especially DELL. Constantly improving the online experience is essential. Cutting edge e-commerce merchants will take this very seriously.

To: edamo who wrote (127868)	5/23/1999 11:21:00 AM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 176387

ed - *** somewhat OT ******** At the time I was doing that work, GM was just beginning design (both in the business and physical sense) of the saturn plant in spring hill. Nissan was reworking their plant in Smyrna, just down the road. I was struck both by the difference in technology and the difference in organization. The Nissan plant had just three layers of management. At the top was the plant manager, who had 5 reports, one of whom was responsible for production, one for quality, one for procurement and logistics, one for planning and one for HR. Any other functions (which would have been permanent staff functions in an American company) were done by temporary "teams" assembled under an "expert", usually from within the plant but sometimes from Japan. Below the production guy were team leads, and below the team leads the actual people working on the line. So communication paths were very simple, and the teams had great power over their work environment and how they did their jobs. The "production management" systems were also very simple - a large monitor over each work area showed the status of the line two steps ahead and two steps behind, with expected transfer times. A team got "points" for never slowing down the teams downstream, and for not overloading the teams upstream, and got special points for the quality of their particular work items. These points translated to bonus incentives which were paid weekly. To keep everyone interested in the quality, a car was pulled at random from each of 5 points on the line, every four hours ( or twice a shift) and a meticulous quality check was done. The results were immediately posted to all stations. This created a real sense of pride in the individual teams, and competition to show perfect quality on this twice-a-shift "quiz" was fierce. The line speed was largely self-regulating, and the speed was driven more by how long it took for each station to do a quality job than by any artificial idea of how long each job should take. If a particular station seemed to be "slower" than the rest, it was not assumed that the workers were slackers, but rather that there was more work required at that station to achieve quality. The solution was left up to the teams but often the number of people on the line at that point was increased to achieve completion which matched the desired line speed. The "automation systems" to achieve this were very simple, a relatively small computer system tracked the assemblies and anticipated completion times to keep the monitors updated. The supply side logistics were also simple. Relatively constant reports of parts use at each station were transmitted to the team leads as well as to the suppliers, who were on 4-hour delivery of sub-assemblies and parts. It was the team leader's job to resolve supplier logistical problems, and each had a direct contact with the suppliers who fed each station. The guy responsible for procurement therefore only managed the larger issues of pricing, contracts and payments. There was a competition as well among teams to have the minimal in-plant parts inventory, which in theory could be as much as 4 hours but in reality was often closer to an hour's production. Parts on supplier trucks did not count as the plant did not take ownership until the parts were unloaded, but most suppliers also preferred many small shipments to a single large shipment. Contrast this with the Saturn plant at Spring hill. There were 7 layers of management at the plant alone, and an additional 2 layers above that in the GM headquarters for major functions like procurement and production. This was considered "lean and mean" compared to the average of 14 layers in "traditional" GM plants. There was a very large production automation system which managed many assembly operations and determined how to route parts and assemblies. When something went haywire, the plant people had virtually no power to correct the problem, it got escalated to a team from EDS or to a production "SWAT team". The effect of any individual worker's contribution to the finished product was hard to see and there was little feedback about how well anyone was doing, aside from general quality and production rate reports. These reports were available on a daily and weekly basis but only on an overall line basis.