My point of view about a scary trend in today’s industry

Hi there,

I’m very happy about becoming a part of this community. As my nick says I’m working as a process engineer in the plastic industry and I’m going to write a blog about my experience in the plastic industry and some interesting facts about plastics itself to bring you a little bit closer to this interesting part of the industry and everyday life. Since this is my fist blog please be patient and I’m very thankful for your comments so I can improve my English writing.

Since my days in college I’m very much interested in Material Science and especially the plastic-engineering. It all started with the lecture about “synthetic and natural polymeric materials” and the almost endless possibilities which this group of material stands for. After years of studying plastics became my profession and I started working in the automotive environment. But then reality sets in. I had to learn that not all people working with plastics are familiar with the rules of constructing plastic products and with the materials attributes. This can be very frustrating because you always have to explain yourself about facts that are well known by labored people. Over the last 5 years I have been working for different companies from 150 up to 10.000 employees and I recognized the trend that due to the lack of labored workers it is getting worse. I found 2 principles responsible for this trend.
The Peter Principle and the SNAFU-Principle are the reality in the today’s industry. The first principle says that “in a hierarchy people tend to rise to "their level of incompetence." Thus, as people are promoted, they become progressively less-effective because good performance in one job does not guarantee similar performance in another. Named after the Canadian researcher Dr. Laurence J. Peter (1910-90) who popularized this observation in his 1969 book 'The Peter Principle.' (Quelle: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Peter-principle.html)”. If you work in such a hierarchically environment like the automotive industry for example you know what I’m talking about. In nearly every hierarchy you will people who started their career on the low-level as an operator for example and have worked their way up to the management-level as a QMB or QMR (Quality Management Representative). Don’t get me wrong there are people who has started their career as a dishwasher or something like that and ended up as a millionaire. But that’s not the rule and these stories of success got always something to do with ideas, visions and with the right amount of ambition and purposefulness and not with 5 years of experience in a semiprofessional production environment and a 3 month advanced training in Quality management or similar. The result of this course of action is that the key positions are occupied by under-qualified people who cannot fulfill the requirements of their job and are not able to find the right decisions. This
The second Principle is called SNAFU and it stands for Situation normal all fooled up. It deals with the communication in an organization or company and the fear of the people to say the right things at the right time. To demonstrate the meaning I found this poem on the net:

The SNAFU-Principle:
In the beginning was the Plan.
And then came the Assumptions.
And the Assumptions were without form.
And the Plan was without substance.
And darkness was upon the face of the Workers. And they spoke among themselves, saying, "It is a crock of shit, and it stinks."
And the Workers went unto their Supervisors and said, "It is a pail of dung, and we can't live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers, saying, "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors, saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves, saying to one another, "It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents, saying unto them, "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him, "This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor of the company with very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan and saw that it was good.
And the Plan became Policy.
And this is how shit happens.
Quelle: http://freakwg.com/snafue.html
This means that due to the employee’s fear of losing their job by saying the wrong things the truth is unspoken and the wrong decisions are made. There are a lot of example for this behavior. It may be that the recent VW scandal is a result of acting with these two principles.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it a little bit.