Promoting PCT v3.1

[From Dag Forssell (930819 1125)]

Just received a wonderful introductory paragraph suggestion from Bill P.

Bill also suggested sub-headings to mark off changes in subject.
So far, all I have indicated has been the regular:

···

----------------
My mind feels blank at the moment. Suggestions?

With Bill's paragraph, the first page looks like: Promoting PCT v3.1

(This paper is slanted for an audience of engineering managers, but
should be suitable for anyone. Question for reviewer: Will this address
issues of concern to the manager? At all levels of any organization? Will
a manager start reading?)

ABSTRACT:

Suggestions? Necessary?
The second paragraph (by Bill P.) is the abstract?!

CONTROL: A KEY MANAGEMENT INSIGHT First in a series

Why is it so hard to get a company running smoothly, with people
committing to the overall objective, caring about their jobs, maintaining
their motivation, resolving problems and taking advantage of
opportunities on their own initiative?

I will suggest in this article that running a company is difficult
because we lack a theory of human behavior that actually fits the way
human beings work. Most managers have a working acquaintance with human
nature, but it is based mostly on hard practical experience, as
journeymen of old based their knowledge of machines and materials on the
accumulated lore of their trades. Modern engineering is what it is today
because of theories: theories of matter and energy that permit accurate
prediction of the behavior of material things. Until recently, there were
no theories of that kind concerning human behavior. Human affairs are
hard to manage because we have not understood the basic principles that
underly human behavior. Now we are beginning to see a new way to find
such principles. This article is an attempt to show how these new
principles work, as far as we understand them today. They are the
principles of control, but seen from a viewpoint that has not occurred
to others who use the same word. It will take us a few pages to show the
difference.

In one Fortune 500 technology company with 25,000 employees, where the
insights about control introduced in this paper were applied to teamwork
in a manufacturing group of 120 people, line delivery on time went up
from 23 to 98%. Ability to ship customer orders on time went up from 83
to 101%. Overtime was reduced from 12 to 3%. Productivity went up 21%.
Defects fell by a factor of 5, and work in process inventory fell from
75 days to 52. These improvements were achieved over a seven month period
and the group won "site of the month award" 11 out of 12 months after
that.

People often talk of "social control systems." For instance, the quality
pioneer Dr. W. Edwards Deming talks of a corporation as a system that
must have an aim, and the aim of the system must be clear to everyone in
the system. Indeed, a corporation can be portrayed as a system of control
systems where each level of executives translates broad goals from above
into more detailed functional goals for their own and lower levels.
Ultimately, the goals are translated into action by individuals.

Thanks, Bill

Best to all, Dag