Tom Andel

Materials handling's future? Not mush.
May 19, 2008

There’s been a lot of brilliant discussion going back and forth lately, both electronically and in print, about the value of information being poured into young kids’ heads today. In the current issue of Modern, John Usher, professor of industrial engineering at the University of Louisville and a valued member of Modern’s advisory board, says “Six Sigma” is just a new way to package tried and true concepts like focusing on customer needs, process measurement, leadership, employee involvement, data-driven decision making, organization-wide quality education, continuous improvement, and variance reduction.   “These were all great things to pursue before Six Sigma and will continue to be great things to pursue long after it dies and goes through the next round of repackaging,” he says.

Someone wrote a letter to Dr. Usher and copied me, applauding his plain speaking. In fact the letter-writer went one better by recalling what his technical school’s department chair told a class of incoming freshmen: “You’re going to spend four years here (most of you, anyway) learning how to do it. Then you’ll graduate, go out into the real world and find out how it’s actually done. Try not to confuse the two.”

Sounds like even the faculties preparing our young skulls full of mush for the working world are just as cynical about the stuff they’re mixing into that mush as the employers who are going to have to reformulate that concoction.

Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation, responded to my last blog about meeting a truly original thinker who happens to be a sophomore at Wright State University in Dayton, OH. The student, Ian Fuller, made a great showing at the 2008 Ohio Fuel Cell Coalition Symposium in Akron, OH, last week. Although Ian’s not that familiar with the world of materials handling, he had enough imagination to describe how his vision of fuel cells could be applied in our world to power lift trucks. Is this kid typical of the next generation of employees or is it the kid with the skull full of adulterated mush?

Bauerlein wrote back to me: “There are many brilliant kids out there, Tom, doing amazing things, but they are a pitifully small group, and when we leave their circles we take a big drop into bad reading habits and skills, no historical curiosity, and lots of civic disengagement.” 

As long as there are even just a few Ians out there to whom we can introduce basic materials handling concepts, I’m convinced their brilliance will help sustain materials handling as both an art and a science. Prove me right. We’ll be working on our special September issue devoted to “Materials Handling’s Future” very soon, and I’d like to profile young people like Ian and share their brilliance with your colleagues in our audience. I respect Mr. Bauerlein’s opinion, but I’d like to show him there are many more exceptions to his rule than he thinks, and they have a real future in materials handling logistics.

Posted by Tom Andel on May 19, 2008 | Comments (0)