One thing that's really cool about being a software developer (and I promise I'll relate this to the article in a sec...) is that you can practice your craft by yourself, with freely-available tools, and then point at something cool that you have done. This is advice that I give to software developers seeking jobs -- spend some time on your job search, but also spend some time contributing to open source projects or creating cool things of your own, which you can then point to as a demonstration of your craft.
This seems like a great opportunity for those in other professions to do the same. Laid off from your Industrial Systems Engineering job and looking for work? Help a homeless shelter optimize their processes. Accountant? Donate some time to a local thrift store to help get their books in order.
I think this could really hit the mutual-benefit sweet spot: it helps you get a job, and it helps an organization trying to benefit the community as well.
I've actually tried to do stuff like this before. Offers of skilled assistance from individuals seem to be refused or ignored. You're welcome to fill some soup bowls, though!
It would also probably help you feel more confident when interviewing for jobs. You know you have valuable skills that can make a difference to an organization
This is one of those little gems that you sometimes find in HN. It is not a world changing idea but it can really make a difference in people that are struggling to find a job.
It would be very interesting to see a list of things that people have built or done just to learn and show up their work in different professions.
This is right on point, what we should do is ask them to make videos of what and how they did, and get them to other soup kitchens, why help only one when they could easily help hundreds with a few youtube videos. I would even be interested in watching them
Kudos to Mr. Foriest for taking Toyota up on their offer. When someone comes along and says "Hey, we can show you how to do your job better", most people take it as a threat. Thats my guess as to why programs like this aren't more popular. No one wants to look incompetent (though I certainly wouldn't look at it that way).
That's because it is a threat. Disruption to your current process has a cost, and there is no assurance that such a cost will be paid back anytime soon, if ever.
I thought it was pretty poor reporting for the article not to mention that what Toyota donated was industrial engineering expertise.
In college we called the guys in the IE program "imaginary engineers" but in real life the discipline is responsible for making assembly lines and other manufacturing processes work as efficiently as possible. All modern manufacturers of any scale live and die by their IE departments.
This is really cool, and I hate to nitpick, but comparing "up to 90 minutes" with a "average wait time of 18 minutes" is misleading, wrong, and annoying. Let's compare average to average, not max to average.
This is a fascinating approach to solving one of the greatest problems charities face: negative public perception of "overhead". People react extremely negatively when a charity has any significant percentage of donations going to overhead, which makes it very difficult for charities to invest in themselves to improve efficiency and promote growth. By donating "efficiency", Toyota is doing the equivalent of donating money to charities but in a way that allows them to use it for overhead without it actually being labeled as such. Brilliant!
This is great. A check is easy and visible, but if companies really want to donate to charity, employee time makes a huge difference.
This is one example, but there are dozens. PR and marketing, organizing, programming systems, construction expertise... It happens less often than it should but frequently also more often than we hear about. Toyota just has a good PR team.
It's also a better way for you personally to get involved. Anyone can mop floors or scrape old paint. Very few have the skills you have, so figuring out how to donate your expertise is a better use of your time.
The whole article is a PR team's dream: an article in a prominent paper highlighting both their company's charitable work and efficiency expertise! (But a nice story regardless.)
I've volunteered a lot of places and money is easy to give, but to invest time is frequently more valuable and makes more of a difference. It's also a lot harder to give up a Saturday (or in this case a few productive engineers) in order to really help out. It puts the problem on your radar in a completely different way.
I love this idea, and I'd love to see more of it. However, I don't think companies are properly incentivised to offer employee time/expertise over money. You can get tax breaks for donating cash, leading a lot of companies to donate not only for the good PR, but also the kickback of a tax deduction.
A tax break for companies that also donate time/expertise would be great, although I have no idea how you'd structure it.
In San Francisco, not well. I can't submit both BuzzFeed and the Gawker network's stories, because pg blocks them, but you can google "Twitter + Charity + tax cut" and see the stories.
I worked alongside industrial engineers at a Kodak manufacturing plant that applied the Toyota Production System to their operation over the course of several years (once you start you're never done, thus continuous improvement, etc) and the results were dramatic (in a good way). I liken it to "industrial UX" as a lot of the observational techniques and ways of getting to the true root cause of issues are not too different than what a UX person would do for a website. Personally, I still use what I learned whether it's laying out my kitchen or my desk at work to maximize my own efficiency.
As an industrial engineer I'm quite excited about this. I'm 100% sure there's tons of opportunities for improvements at most charities (heck, at most companies as well). One big aspect of the Toyota Production System is that it encourages everyone to help introduce improvements. The traditional example is allowing conveyor belt workers to stop the belt when they discovered a problem. If they can instill that type of culture at the charities they work with, the benefits could be even bigger. Teaching a man how to fish and all that.
This is an example of making a bad system more efficiently bad. So it's great that the process can be made more efficient, but that doesn't address the cause of why people are having to rely upon food banks in the first place or why food banks have been expanding their activities in the last few years. If food banks exist then something is wrong at a more fundamental level and it would be better to direct efforts towards trying to fix that problem.
I'm not sure that falls to Toyota to do, though. I would commend them for what they have done, that's a large and direct improvement to the lives of the needy. Just throwing money at the problem rarely results in the same.
What's wrong with food banks? Let's look at the options to handle a person without a job or savings.
1. ignore them, of course
2. give them a job
3. give them money
4. give them food
1 is awful, 2 is infeasible, you can't magically find a productive job for everyone, 3 and 4 both seem fine to me. Would you have them all buying food in stores instead? That seems like it'll take more money to get the same amount of people fed.
Hmm can anyone match the cost of the "donation" to typical monetary donations for similar causes?
Because deploying engineers is not cheap too. Toyota provided more bang for the buck that is for sure, but were they in the red or black compared to just writing a check?
I don't think this is a viable question. The value that the given good (money, expertise) has to the donating entity is of no concern for the people receiving it. For them, the value they can extract is of importance. So the interesting question is "if Toyota had cut a check of the same monetary value as their own costs, would that be of higher value to the charity?" and I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Even if the current savings may be lower than the cost of the engineers, the process changes will hopefully propagate and still bear fruit in a decade. Money would be gone by then.
> "... [Toyota engineers] drew a layout identifying spots where there were slowdowns. They reorganized the shelves by food groups and used colored tape to mark the grain, vegetable, fruit and protein sections. The time clients spent in the pantry was reduced nearly by half."
Ikea needs to hire Toyota to cut the time I shop there in half. That place is a maze! Maybe it's by design . . .
It's by design to provide as much exhibition space as possible.
At least in the Ikea stores in my region they started to provide shortcuts. When using all of them, it's hardly 5 minutes to get through the entire shop from entry to cashier, where it otherwise takes half an hour. (but then you see practically nothing).
It's interesting the direction that corporate giving is taking. Here's a neat interactive from the Chronicle of Philanthropy showing the shift away from cash donations to products and volunteerism:
It's good that people are doing this, it's often a lot better than throwing money at a problem. An organisation that does similar things in India is Atma (http://atma.org.in/).
The problem when you measure one thing and optimize it the things you don't measure often get worse. That's an important thing to keep in mind when optimizing.
[+] [-] nathanb|12 years ago|reply
This seems like a great opportunity for those in other professions to do the same. Laid off from your Industrial Systems Engineering job and looking for work? Help a homeless shelter optimize their processes. Accountant? Donate some time to a local thrift store to help get their books in order.
I think this could really hit the mutual-benefit sweet spot: it helps you get a job, and it helps an organization trying to benefit the community as well.
[+] [-] nknighthb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecoffey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drinkzima|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huherto|12 years ago|reply
It would be very interesting to see a list of things that people have built or done just to learn and show up their work in different professions.
[+] [-] moneyrich2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grimtrigger|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saraid216|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Amadou|12 years ago|reply
In college we called the guys in the IE program "imaginary engineers" but in real life the discipline is responsible for making assembly lines and other manufacturing processes work as efficiently as possible. All modern manufacturers of any scale live and die by their IE departments.
[+] [-] apalmer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwaltrip|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NickM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mratzloff|12 years ago|reply
This is one example, but there are dozens. PR and marketing, organizing, programming systems, construction expertise... It happens less often than it should but frequently also more often than we hear about. Toyota just has a good PR team.
It's also a better way for you personally to get involved. Anyone can mop floors or scrape old paint. Very few have the skills you have, so figuring out how to donate your expertise is a better use of your time.
[+] [-] mjs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bargl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eksith|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rescripting|12 years ago|reply
A tax break for companies that also donate time/expertise would be great, although I have no idea how you'd structure it.
[+] [-] huherto|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpe82|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisjustinm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hencq|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motters|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LockeWatts|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dylan16807|12 years ago|reply
1. ignore them, of course
2. give them a job
3. give them money
4. give them food
1 is awful, 2 is infeasible, you can't magically find a productive job for everyone, 3 and 4 both seem fine to me. Would you have them all buying food in stores instead? That seems like it'll take more money to get the same amount of people fed.
What would you prefer?
[+] [-] echohack|12 years ago|reply
But how can you solve it? That's a huge problem!
In engineering, and particularly with software, we seek to answer the small questions until we build a robust system.
[+] [-] venomsnake|12 years ago|reply
Because deploying engineers is not cheap too. Toyota provided more bang for the buck that is for sure, but were they in the red or black compared to just writing a check?
[+] [-] Xylakant|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twentysix|12 years ago|reply
This is the video of Toyota Production System being used in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy as mentioned in the article.
[+] [-] caycep|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snambi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gashad|12 years ago|reply
Ikea needs to hire Toyota to cut the time I shop there in half. That place is a maze! Maybe it's by design . . .
[+] [-] goodcanadian|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgeorgi|12 years ago|reply
At least in the Ikea stores in my region they started to provide shortcuts. When using all of them, it's hardly 5 minutes to get through the entire shop from entry to cashier, where it otherwise takes half an hour. (but then you see practically nothing).
[+] [-] knowaveragejoe|12 years ago|reply
http://philanthropy.com/article/How-America-s-Biggest/140269...
[+] [-] dorian-graph|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legulere|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vanderZwan|12 years ago|reply
"I've worked in the private sector... they expect results!" - Ray Stantz
[+] [-] imran|12 years ago|reply