The NEW Computer
Since arriving at Rearsby I was plagued with requests for investment in the ‘New’ computer. When I arrived in 1978, a new computer project was nearing completion and ready to be ordered. Data was processed on old Burrows card machine with manual data input in the data ‘comping’ room. I was assured it had all been researched, consulted upon, planned and it was the answer. I went ahead with it on that basis and in the event, it cost more than indicated and took considerably longer than planned. Plus it was mind-bogglingly boring. No fun at all. Zero.
Worse still, there was an addition overhead called the Systems Department. And the new computer tended to be based in a non frontline area of the business. This was the Finance department, which in those days crunched a lot of data, manually with clerks. I could see the advantages there, clearly - less clerks. But, the finance area worked on different timescales to the rest of the business, certainly in its mindset; monthly cycles and period end.
By contrast the factory was working to cycle-times of less than a minute. What’s more the ‘computer’ was justified on the basis of processing and saving data while vastly improving information and productivity outside Finance in areas of Production Control, Material Control, Purchasing, Stores, etc. I discovered that few understood what was really going on. The Systems department became another stage in the process. Delays could result…and they did.
Worse… it (the computer) added a further layer of complexity to the business. Fair enough if benefits were to flow with obvious and measured results?
I had attended a seminar at the local Rothley Court Hotel, given by a Shell executive, entitled ‘Doing business in Japan’ (the 1970s rising star in manufactured goods). This was before I first visited Japan myself and one thing he observed stayed with me. The Japanese as a society, and as part of their culture, severely dislike complexity and uncertainty. They will spend enormous efforts in reducing and indeed eliminating complexity and uncertainty. Hence why, as I was later to discover, all their public transport runs precisely on time.
Around my fourth year at Rearsby, there were requests for a new ‘new’ computer. By now I was convinced that the new computer did solve a problem: the computer company/software developers need for sales. I was far from sure it solved ours? It was sold as a false Eldorado and taken on as such by my own people. It was not good.
I knew, deep down, something was wrong. Very wrong. The new computer essentially set out to mechanise the existing mess! There was no redesign of the processes by us, before we set out to mechanise the product/process and resulting data flows. Many buyers of such ‘solutions’ I was sure, went ahead empty-headed.