Gibson laying off staff ??

[CB91710]

This! A thousand times this!

I had a stats professor who had one issue with some of the manufacturing quality philosophies which were big back in the 1990s. He summed it in one sentence:
"There is always error."

I would say this has the same meaning as ship happens. (Or even ish happens.)

"Quality is built in, not inspected in"
"Every employee is empowered"
"Suppliers as partners"

Went through that at Douglas... TQMS... Total Quality Management System
They started to implement it at the hospital my wife worked at.
When they introduced the concept, my wife snickered.
They called her out "Oh! You are familiar with the concept?"
Her brain went totally blank and the only thing she could say was "Time to Quit, Management Sucks"

 

[rfrizz]

"Quality is built in, not inspected in"
"Every employee is empowered"
"Suppliers as partners"

Went through that at Douglas... TQMS... Total Quality Management System
They started to implement it at the hospital my wife worked at.
When they introduced the concept, my wife snickered.
They called her out "Oh! You are familiar with the concept?"
Her brain went totally blank and the only thing she could say was "Time to Quit, Management Sucks"

How was your experience at Douglas?

 

[CB91710]

How was your experience at Douglas?

It was a clusterfuck.
The Japanese mentality doesn't work with American union labor.
Give an American worker the "empowerment" to shut down the line and they'll never let it restart, claiming some BS reason.
The Japanese worker is hesitant to shut down the line because he knows if he's not 100% correct, he will catch hell.
They reorganized management, ultimately giving each manager smaller groups, so they needed MORE managers.
"Just In Time" delivery doesn't work when you're dealing with materials with a 6 month lead time.

 

[wncgearaddict]

"Quality is built in, not inspected in"
"Every employee is empowered"
"Suppliers as partners"

Went through that at Douglas... TQMS... Total Quality Management System
They started to implement it at the hospital my wife worked at.
When they introduced the concept, my wife snickered.
They called her out "Oh! You are familiar with the concept?"
Her brain went totally blank and the only thing she could say was "Time to Quit, Management Sucks"

Thank God for her. Or the Great Pumpkin if she is not religious. Hospitals and Pharmacies being run on the breed of LEAN/JIT/NEMP/SAQS that gets repackaged and sold by these hucksters- means people will die. I know of examples.

 

[wncgearaddict]

Yep. Shit happens....in every company... The big question is, does it make it out the back door to the loading dock....

S-H-I-P happens. Large scale or bespoke. In production there is a bad example of everything. There is an import mechanic out Chattanooga who gets flown to LA and NY and Miami to service Ferrari's. He actually let me assist on a Testarossa and he trusted me to assist on a 512TR(Testarossa update model). The 512TR was a problem child from word go for one owner who had it since new. No ifs, ands or or's about it, he and I found a mistake the engine had an issue with one cam lobe from Maranello, new. It was a part that should never have been installed and had the driver not put only 63xx miles on the car, the engine could have been permanently lunched.

The TR and 512TR were flagship models, not DINO's, not 3#8's- they were the absolute best of the best.

SHIP happens. A bad apple gets out on the street- Savile Row & Ferrari or PRS & Blade or Gibson and Fender. Bespoke or large scale production.

 

[jamhandy]

I can only hope Guitar Center does finally go out of business...

...oh, woops, wrong thread... haha (not really, I just hate Guitar Center ad hope all the rumors that have circulated for over a decade actually come true and they do go out of business...)

 

[rfrizz]

It was a clusterfuck.
The Japanese mentality doesn't work with American union labor.
Give an American worker the "empowerment" to shut down the line and they'll never let it restart, claiming some BS reason.
The Japanese worker is hesitant to shut down the line because he knows if he's not 100% correct, he will catch hell.
They reorganized management, ultimately giving each manager smaller groups, so they needed MORE managers.
"Just In Time" delivery doesn't work when you're dealing with materials with a 6 month lead time.

I just File System ChecKing hate JIT! At least I do when it is misapplied. For non-critical goods, it does help organizations reduce capital, which actually benefits everyone.

But when it is used in organizations such as hospitals, I don't think it is so great, or even good at all. The first thing which occurred to me was hospitals. If you JIT something as minor as OR gowns for surgeons and nurses, and there is a mass casualty disaster... Oops!

Some things you just have to stockpile.

EDIT: This was never ever mentioned in any of the business classes I took. Keep in mind, my u/g is Information Systems (aka MIS) which is a business degree, and I went back for an MBA.

 

[Jay4321]

Even now (close to two years into this current environment) I still see purchasing agents trying for 45-day delivery times for import materials they'd be lucky to see manufactured in 60, let alone getting booked shipped out of Europe or China or wherever. And then when it's actually deliverable four months later they don't have room to receive it, because all of the super-critical material they were screaming for a month ago hasn't even moved off their dock.

JIT is a fine approach where appropriate and for some of us a necessity (chemicals in my case, but same for foods, perishable goods and so on). Unfortunately a lot of supply chains right now have some very weak links manned by underqualified people, some whose entire expertise seems to be trying to push someone else via email and "take charge and not take no for an answer," as if that's going to move a container ship across an ocean any faster. These past two years have exposed a lot of useless people.

Anyway as to Gibson here, I don't know. If there actually are layoffs that's not necessarily a company-wide trend and I wouldn't consider Gibson a solid bellwether of anything even if it were.

 

[Jay4321]

Storage is an understated problem in all this too, not just as far as the traditional waste and depreciation concerns that JIT tries to address but the actual real estate. Warehouse vacancy in the US almost nothing right now and very expensive, not much different than housing (and by the way nobody can seem to staff those warehouses either).

And as I sort of mentioned right now it's harder to cycle through your inventory to open up the warehouse space you do have. For example a factory might have materials A and B on site but are waiting on material C which has been delayed 30 days in order to run production. Meanwhile materials DEF are coming later this week and they don't have enough space for those until something moves. And at least from what I see, surplus they try to order is spoken for the first time a sales agent feels the slightest pressure from the customer who needs something faster than is possible to order.

 

[rfrizz]

To be fair, you have to run JIT on hospitals, you can't stockpile patients in front of the surgery, same with the used equipment and so on.

We can agree on that the hospital need to have stock for medicine and such. But the operation of the hospital you need to run as JIT, or else you need way larger waiting rooms.

And IF a mass casualty should happen, you have more capacity for those patients, because you didn't stock up on patients and such.

Uh, what?

 

[CB91710]

in short, JIT works on hospitals.

Just the statement before mine, that wouldn't run JIT on a hospital. Which wouldn't be beneficial at all.

Perishables, of course, though even they have a shelf life.
When the Plague started, I went 3 months without my blood pressure medication because there was no stock and China wasn't exporting anything.
Unmedicated, my BP can reach 200/120.
There is no excuse for them not to have had that stockpiled, particularly since there had already been a recall on the same drug from another source that my provider did not use, so supplies were already strained.

I placed my refill order a week after all of the BS started in March 2020, and they were already out, it's not like I ordered 6 months after the BS started and they had gone through their supply.

 

[robral]

I'd hope that if they are laying off staff, they're laying off the ones whose workmanship, or lack thereof, is the reason why Gibson gets slammed for having below standard quality control for their price point.

I wish that the group that controls PRS had bought Gibson during its bankruptcy phase, and implemented PRS quality control measures in Gibson's operations.

Gibsons built to PRS quality standards....that's a dream.

I've owned close to 50 Les Pauls over the years. Gratned, my collection is really pared down these days. I own a 2014 R9, a 2018 R9 with Brazilian board, a 2019 60th Anniversary R9, and a 2020 60th Anniversary R0. I also had a 2018 R9 that I sold earlier this year. All other Les Pauls were Standards from various years. Some were bought new, but most were pre-owned.

I've never had any kind of QC issue with any of them. Now, this is not to say that they don't have their issues. But every brand has its issues here and there. People love to talk about PRS as if they are perfect, but I have seen some real DOGS -- especially in their SE line.

Again, every guitar is different. But am I the only one whose retinas come close to detaching from an eye roll when this topic comes up?

 

[CB91710]

I don't know how it works where you live, but here you would get that at a pharmacy and not at a hospital.

And yes the world supply chains took a big hit with the "plague". But hopefully we all came out stronger and established more reliable supply chains.

My HMO is the doctor, pharmacy, and hospital.
There are some smaller offices that have more limited hours, but even those without a full hospital on site have a pharmacy and urgent care.

It has its advantages and disadvantages.
Advantage, we have 24-hour pharmacies and they also ship by mail or UPS, and my doctor can prescribe something and I can walk out with it right then and there.
If shit hits the fan during an office visit, the doctor can immediately admit you.

OTOH, I can't use a pharmacy other than the provider, so if I'm out of town and, say my insulin goes bad or a suitcase is stolen, it would take an act of congress to replace my meds. My provider overnighting them won't work on a road trip when we don't know where we'll be the next day.

 

[rfrizz]

To be fair, you have to run JIT on hospitals, you can't stockpile patients in front of the surgery, same with the used equipment and so on.

We can agree on that the hospital need to have stock for medicine and such. But the operation of the hospital you need to run as JIT, or else you need way larger waiting rooms.

And IF a mass casualty should happen, you have more capacity for those patients, because you didn't stock up on patients and such.

I'm sorry, but you completely missed the point, or you are yanking my chain.

Stock up on patients? Really?

 

[CB91710]

I don't understand the function of the hospital in all of this.

You go to the physician, that then acknowledge you have some problems, writes out some prescriptions for the medicine, and then you go to the pharmacy.

Why the extra step for the hospital, if you already are a established patient with the need for that medication?

The whole thing is one company and one facility.
The pharmacy and doctor's office are in the same building, or a building adjacent to the hospital.
I don't technically have a pharmacy that is separate from my hospital. My pharmacy is used by my hospital.
I do not have a choice to go to a different pharmacy, I have to use the one that is owned by my insurance company.

For the most part, it has a lot of advantages, but issues like running short on medication are a serious problem.

 

[CB91710]

oh okay, crazy.

Some would think it was a free choice, free market and all of that. Like here you can choose between multiple brands of medications, usually the original or some copy brand (if they medication is done with the patent)

Here pharmacies have nothing to do with the hospital, of course a hospital have their own internal pharmacy, but its not for public to walk in a use their prescription.

Same if you use your insurance company for private treatment, you also have multiple choices to where you want to be treated.

It depends on your insurance company.
I'm with an HMO... Health Maintenance Organization, and they handle everything in-house.
There are still independent doctors and pharmacies that accept general insurance payment. With them, you have *some* choice in what brand drug you want, but the insurance companies will only pay enough to cover the generic drugs, so getting a specific brand-name might cost more... such as asking specifically for "Crestor" might cost you $40 where accepting Rosuvastatin would be covered by your $5 co-payment.
I don't have that option.

 

[jbash]

Yeah sorry..I've had a few (3) clunkers from PRS and they were expensive core models. Oh sure the "binding", fretwork, and wood was flawless, but they all had hardware design issues that kept them from ever being gig worthy without replacement/redesign.

 

[skydog]

The internet is a wealth of info!

 

[Arf]

For every executive they lay off they could afford 25 people to do actual real work.

 

[CB91710]

For every executive they lay off they could afford 25 people to do actual real work.

Uhh... Sorry... No, they couldn't.