Day 38-Quarantine-Six Trillion Dollar Experiment

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Grumpa Joe

This COVID-19 is bringing back memories of my past life as an engineer. One thing that would spoil my day was a customer complaint of a cable tie failure. Because it was my job to maintain and produce better quality, performance, and reliability of the product line I had to jump into the fire immediately. The quality manager came to me and asked what are you going to do to keep this from happening again? Sound familiar? It is the same question reporters ask President Trump every day. One question begets another, Like tell me how the product was being used, applied, what environment was it used in? The questions asked by me countered the what are you going to do question. We used a unique quality control numbering system that allowed us to trace the manufacture of a specific product back to the material it came from. The problem was that no-one ever thought to capture the number when they complained about a product. We sold cable ties in bags of one thousand with a QC number on the bag. If I got one cable tie back it was a miracle. Sometimes it was the failed product, at other times it was just another one from the bag. We hit the bonanza when we got samples of failed product and the unused product still in its original container. It was a miracle if we got all of that and a description of the application, and environment. I spun my wheels for countless hours tracking down the possibilities. I had to initiate lab tests, I did microscopic exams, and material checks, and most times I failed to come up with an answer. I needed more data. I feel for the COVID-19 Task force when they are asked the stupid questions like will the virus come back in fall. I would not last on that stage very long because I tend to become sarcastic very quickly. If it is one thing I learned over forty years of being put into a situation where I had to answer questions it is that you don’t create an answer if you don’t know the answer. Real answers need facts and analysis by experts and even then the predictions are tenuous at best.

 

During the last week I have heard too many people demanding more testing. Governors stating we don’t have enough testing, employers stating they need testing before they can allow people to go back to work. The good doctors on the podium explain where they can get tests done, but no one wants to take the lead and get it started. I hear excuses like we went to the lab you suggested but they need an approval from the FDA for a reagent, Why? They can’t get the one that is approved. So what are you doing about getting alternate approved? What about a different lab with different test apparatus? I love to hear VP Pence report. He has some very bright and science minded problem solvers working on his teams. They seem to anticipate problems and the questions they will get not because they want to cool off the reporters, but because they are on top of the problem and want to get it solved.

One of the doctors mentioned that the virus does not live long in UV light. I love it because Trump picked up that bit of info and his mind began inventing ways to use the UV to kill the virus in the body. A true entrepreneur he is. The press kicked his ass all day today because they couldn’t fathom how such a procedure would be executed. I heard Rush Limbaugh explain that he found a medical procedure that actually uses uv light in the body to aid the cure. The Press assassinated Trump all day today about his people killing suggestions.

For instance, you test negative and you are cleared to work. You show up at work and touch something that has the virus on it and become a carrier. What did the test accomplish? Or you test positive for the virus and go into quarantine for two weeks, but when you go back to work you touch something and become a carrier. What business really needs is a tester like the ones the Iranians have devised (except it works) which detects the virus in an area. At least then the area can be sanitized before anyone comes it to reinfect it.

The real value we will get from testing is data that can be used to statistically answer all the questions about the virility of the virus. That is coming ever so slowly as we fight the virus and test to learn. Even when we learn everything we need to know, we still haven’t gotten one step closer to a vaccine. The problem at the head of the list today is not testing but finding a cure.

Actually, the number one problem today is not the cure, but getting the economy back to where it was. It should be easier now that we know as much as we do about the virus, and how deadly it is or isn’t.

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I Feel For Toyota

Posted on 24/02/2010 by Grumpa Joe

During my fifty-three year career in manufacturing, I developed a flair for solving a problem. It is not easy.  In order to find the root cause you have to continue to ask why until people think you are nuts.  My last job was manufacturing a product that we made in the billions. The item is relatively simple in appearance, but it is highly functional. The product is a cable tie. The original purpose of the cable tie was to hold wires together.  Over the years, people have learned to find many applications for this unique item.

My team designed the product, designed and made the molds that produced the product, and set the quality requirements of the manufacturing process. Often we received a complaint. Usually, a customer told us the ties were breaking. He wanted us to fix the problem. Our sales staff immediately replaced his defective product. Most of the time, it was a single package.  My engineers always asked for samples of the failures and any unused samples from the package that the failure ties came from. The failed tie often contained clues to why it failed.  The unused samples gave us some product to test in our lab. If we were very lucky, the Quality Control number was still on the package. That number allowed us to trace the manufacturing process variables.

Usually, I received a handful of broken ties from the complaint. With those samples, it became my job to determine what caused the failure.  I will not bore you with the details of how I proceeded, but if I could not duplicate the problem in the lab, I was looking for a needle in a haystack. Many times, we shut down our highest producing mold until there was an answer.  Talk about pressure to do something.  I can only imagine what is going on within Toyota right now, but I have a good feeling for what it is. I feel for the engineers whose job it is to solve the problem.

Currently, I drive a 2005 Toyota Avalon. I have rehearsed my reaction to a runaway acceleration many times. I only hope that if it happens that I have enough time to react appropriately before I kill myself or someone else. I have dubbed my car the Death Star. At this writing, I am listening to the Senate questioning of the CEO of Toyota. The man, Akio Toyoda from Toyota, said their fix might not be the answer to the acceleration problem. That is a nice way of saying they still do not have a clue about what is causing the problem.

I also studied the quality process taught by US guru Joe Duran, and utilized by the Japanese car companies. In this program, Duran taught that it is cost effective to shut a line down when you find a problem, and leave it down until you fix the problem.  That is a hard concept to swallow. Most manufacturing companies do not buy into it. Mine often did, but the justification for shutting down a mold had to be great. In Toyota’s move to stop selling cars, and to shut down their factories until they fix the quality problem, they practice what they preach. They will come out as winners in the long term.

In the meantime, I bet there are at least a thousand engineers running like chickens with their heads cut off trying to duplicate the problem. As they analyze every aspect of the design, they will come up with ideas that are very probably the answer, and they will implement solutions. They may even stumble upon the root cause and re-create the problem. That is when I will believe they have solved the problem, and until then I drive the Death Star.

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Why Is Health Care So Expensive?

Posted on 03/10/2009 by Grumpa Joe
High Cost DocumentationDuring the last couple of weeks, I got a first hand reminder of what  it is like in a health care system.  My late Auntie Marie was hospitalized for a few days before she died. Of course, Peggy and I visited often during those days. There was one thing that stuck out as I walked the halls of a well known suburban hospital. No matter which floor we were on,  or which nurse’s station we were near, people were diligently entering data or writing on charts.
I began to wonder what that was all about. Very few of these people were tending to patients, yet all of them were very busy. These people are all very expensive. Health care workers don’t come cheap. What is so important to require so much documentation? I quizzed my daughter, who is a nurse, to explain. We had a very nice father daughter discussion on the matter. She cleared up some of my mis-conceptions.
In summary here is why they document:
1. If it ain’t documented the insurance company, Medicare, etc. doesn’t pay. Of course the hospital is a business, and requires money to run. Patients never like to pay for their own health care,  therefore they pay for insurance to pay the bill for them. The insurance companies are also in business to make a profit. They sell us policies with fine print defining just what they will cover. Medicare does the same thing. Their rules are just as stringent as any insurance company’s. Therefore, hospitals document in order to charge.
Insurance companies take a bad rap when they cite the fine print in a policy, and refuse to pay. We should all be more careful when we buy policies. We tend to go for the lowest cost. Of course we do, why pay more? Except we don’t read the details, or the details don’t matter when we sign the contract. There is a famous insurance company commercial, running now, that touts the ability to tailor make a policy to fit your budget. Guess what? They do it by limiting your benefits. We go for price, they go for the sell, and we are happy until we get into a health crisis and the bill comes to us. 
2. Doctors need information from the nurses in order to make your health care decisions. They work by reading test reports, and the charts documenting vital signs such as temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and  repsonses to medications.  Doctors also write instructions to the nurses for your treatment. Then, as a CYA they document their treatment plan and diagnosis. Again, if it ain’t documented they don’t get paid. A doctor  might spend ten minutes per patient reading a chart, and two minutes talking to him. If you have a serious problem, the doc may take three minutes to explain the prognosis.  Nurses document your vital signs, and dispense drugs. Certified Nursing Assistants do all the other dirty work of keeping patients comfortable. In the good old days, the nurse did it all. My wife Barbara tended to a surgical ward at West Side VA hospital back in 1959. She took care of, and documented up to thirty patients at a time. Life was simpler back then.
3. Hospitals have quality control programs. They are crappy compared to the ones  industry has  put into place to make all the products, and drugs they use, but they have systems.  These systems require documentation. In my business, we said that if we could measure something, we could improve it. Therefore, any quality system requires data documenting metrics that can show management if they are doing well. Most hospitals require you to complete a satisfaction questionnaire when you leave. This is an example of their input.
4. Lastly, health professionals document to CYA (cover your ass). All doctors and hospitals are so afraid a patient will sue them that they over document in order to cover themselves in the event that one of them makes an error. Or, if the patient and his family perceive a screw up.
The bottom line is that I saw dollars with wings and heard a cash register ringing as I walked the corridors of that hospital.
Obama’s solution to this problem is to invent a totally new health care system to compete with the one in place. If the actual health care industry doesn’t know how to fix their problem, what makes us think a group of Congressman and Senators can  invent  a new system to fix it all?
Bend over America, the government wants to give you an enema.
In a future post, I will present a plan for realistic reform. Stay tuned.

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