As a start, here is my contribution to BNR's reduction of operating costs. My ideas are sort of copyrighted as "GSS-n" with an indication of either waste or saving opportunity.
These and other cost-saving ideas and waste horror stories, although highly subjective, could be gathered into an electronic suggestion box based on COCOS and USENET, compiled into a corporate knowledge and rule base so that future mistakes could be avoided. Please note that they are not meant for any finger-pointing exercise!
GSS-1: reduction or elimination of management levels (saving: ?)
Review the role of each level of management. I understand that former BNR President Gedus Sakus once pledged to review the roles of D- and C-level managers, when he cited 1 MSS who called the C-level as "degenerate metastate" in one of his State of the Business addresses. My observation over the years is that the hierarchical levels of management only lead to distorted communication where each level adds and/or subtracts the original message, so the top-level directives have very little resemblance when they reach the bottom. Direct communication, such as Brian Hewat's COCOS to all BNR employees and Northern Telecom Reports videos, works much better in my opinion, so what about eliminating 1 or 2 layer(s) of management without layoffs, leading to potential management overhead cost savings? This may require a culture change, and the management should become support staff for the people who do the real work. An organisational structure scheme with fewer layers seems to be working well in NT SCG Corkstown. For me, I can manage myself quite well in many aspects of BNR life.
GSS-2: stop excessive office moves (saving: ?)
Despite George Smyth's efforts to curb the office moves, I continue to see BNR staff being moved just a few metres "to be close to the team". Any office move involves telephone and workstation moves, only to be repeated when the next reorganisation takes place. For me, a person's physical existence has less and less importance since I can reach the global corporation with E-mail, teleconference, and telework. In the mean time, BNR continues to require more and more space, even Lab 6!
Division 7 Lab Council Minutes: SEP. 30, 1993
The issue of additional space needs was heard and Lab 6 was discussed as an option to be considered.
I wonder whatever happened to my proposal of full-office/half-office with ISDN compensation for BNR staff who can effectively telecommute (attached as APPENDIX). The idea was declared more of a "human resources challenge than a facilities one", but there are potential cost savings as well as higher productivity for BNR, in my opinion, if implemented properly. Eventually, I envision the formation of "virtual teams" to oversee "real projects" since many BNR staff would be able to effectively communicate through the network, using Northern Telecom VISIT, for example. The "virtual team" concept would also help allow flexible use of BNR talent throughout the corporation rather than being bound by a certain department which seems to have little relevance to real projects in some cases.
Recently, an anonymous staff was very discouraged when he learned that the Purchase Requisition which he started 1993-03-19, authorised 1993-08-06 was lost, possibly when the Divisional Controller changed. Every Purchase Requisition is a source of pain in the neck since I have to phone so many people to know at which stage it is in. A single database containing all the status, accessible by the originator, would solve the problem. I believe it is coming in the future with groupware and workflow automation, but an authorisation mechanism through COCOS can be implemented now to save at least the time for the paper to move around. I have seen a great success in the Directory Administration when I stopped using paper form and switched to COCOS. Creation of a new userid was sometimes taking more than a week before, but it takes only about 1 day now.
GSS-4: credit card payment for conference registration (saving: ?)
I have been to 7 conferences in 10 years, but in 2 of them (1985 in Toronto (Ontario) CANADA, 1987 in Montreal (Quebec) CANADA), the manual cheque for the conference registration fee, which I always request at least 4 weeks in advance), had not arrived to the conference organisers. I was lucky enough to have enough cash (about 500 CAD) in Toronto, but I had to look for an Automatic Teller Machine in Montreal at midnight, desperate for enough cash from my own personal bank account to pay for the conference registration fee. After the conference when I claimed this amount in the expense report, I was told that I had violated a corporate policy of always using the manual cheque for any conference. Nevertheless, I have done everything to avoid the manual cheque since then. I had thought that I was very unlucky with 2 isolated incidents, but just last week (1993), however, I was astounded to hear that a colleague of mine had exactly the same problem in the U.S.A. where it is hard to find a compatible Automatic Teller Machine. I wonder how many more BNR staff have experienced a similar situation, which is also quite embarrassing for the corporation. Each conference registration fee is about 500 CAD/USD, and theoretically the duplicate payment should be returned to BNR, but I wonder how much gets recovered in reality since the BNR staff involved would likely have little energy left to pursue the recovery of the manual cheque which he/she did not write himself/herself. BNR could simply abolish the manual cheque method in favour of mandating the use of credit card whenever possible.
GSS-5: universal printer access (saving: ?)
Just walking around the office area in Lab 3, I continue to notice an ever increasing number of printers. In some departments, just about everyone seems to have his/her own printer hooked up to a Macintosh, PC or IBM RS/6000 workstation. Even in cases where a very powerful and expensive printer is accessible from the network, I have noticed a sticker "This printer belongs to XXXX. We ask that it not be used by people outside the group". Well, I wonder whatever happened to one of the NT/BNR Core Values "We Are One Team"? In the UNIX workstation and the IBM mainframe environments, there seems to be an excellent central administration where printers are maintained and made universally accessible in a similar way to photocopiers. I believe that it is essential to have access to some reliable printers, but given the thrust for on-line documentation for greater effectiveness (automated search and retrieval) as well as environmental friendliness, I believe that the corporation could discourage the purchase of "personal printers", resulting in cost savings in both capital and operating cost such as toners and service contracts, and encourage the shared resources of networked printers with universal access.
GSS-6: universal FAX access and use of ENVOY-FAX gateway (saving: ?)
The same universal access concept would also apply to FAX machines, which I believe will be superseded by paperless E-mail with file attachments. I have benefited for a few years from the capability to send outgoing FAX messages (text only) from COCOS, and I believe that it could be a cost-saving measure compared with paper-based fax which often requires pre-FAX printing and post_FAX photocopying. However, very few people seem to make use of this feature, so they continue to push paper with hardly legible hand-written notes.
An anonymous department recently purchased an HP-700 workstation ($38K CAD) with a primary goal of running FORTRAN simulations. The workstation was installed, but the potential users have had great difficulty adapting to the HP environment from the SUN SPARCstation since UNIX is not the same on these platforms. They have to re-learn many commands and re-set up the .login/.cshrc/.profile/.xinitrc/.mwmrc files, etc. This represents significant waste in labor charges of the highly skilled scientists and engineers for non-productive activities rather than doing useful simulation.
GSS-8: check before purchase (waste: at least 1 819.44 USD)
The same department has realised that the FORTRAN compiler did not come with the HP Operating System, meaning that the compiler has to be purchased separately at a cost of 1 819.44 USD, plus more for some necessary FORTRAN libraries. The department does not seem to have any money left for this FORTRAN stuff, but in the mean time the very expensive HP-700 workstation sits idle, used only as an X-Terminal. All this could have been avoided had it been a SUN SPARCstation, for example, which comes with the BNR corporate license for a FORTRAN compiler and can be integrated with the existing computing environment.
GSS-9: hiring a contractor instead of a BNR staff (waste: ?)
An anonymous department was very actively looking for a temporary help from another directorate within the same division, where the director and C-levels said no problem but D-levels said all staff are completely tied up despite the fact that the department interviewed a few candidates who did not seem to be so busy. Thus, the department had to contact an external head-hunter to hire a contractor from France for 6 months. The waste includes labour charges spent in resume screening, interviews, numerous phone calls, etc., on top of the head-hunter fees.
GSS-10: flexible organisation
In this model, every employee would report to the company President/CEO. Each employee is treated as an empowered object in the flexible Object-Oriented Organisation. A dynamic object directory of employee skills and workload linked to an inference engine would find suitable matches with virtual projects in the spirit of "We Are One Team". There would be no more reorganisations, 10-metre office moves, etc. Employees would be guaranteed BNR minimum wages, but the rest is up to the project participation. Present managers would become virtual project co-ordinators.
