Software Development Lessons Learned

from Industrial Failures in the 1980s

CHARLOTTE CHANG / @pushorpull

CHARLOTTE CHANG / @pushorpull

Why Automotive, Aerospace &

Software?

invention

influence

adventure

Photo:

20th century

Photo: US Library of Congree, id ppprs.00626

Leo Baekeland

Photo: 20th Century Fox

Photo: Associated Press

Photo: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

IMAGE CREDIT: LIBRARY.UPENN.EDU

IMAGE CREDIT: THEHISTORYBLOG.COM

IMAGE CREDIT: codex99.com

IMAGE CREDIT: s300.photobucket.com/user/etmassey

Photo: BIGFOOT®

Photo: @thepandorasociety.com

William Durant

Alfred Sloan

"Any colour you like as long as it's black." [Ford]

"A car for every purse and purpose." [Sloan]

Fremont Assembly Plant1961-1982

Photo: Rain, Belinda, Photographer (NARA record: 8464467) - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

1,072 vehicles daily

“It was considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States.”

- Bruce Lee, UAW leader

Photo:Frank Langfitt/NPR

Photo: Marc Soller

“Sex, Drugs and The Assembly Line”

1982

CAFE standards

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards are

regulations in the United States, first enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1975,[1] in the wake of the Arab Oil Embargo, to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks (trucks, vans and

sport utility vehicles) produced for sale in the United States.

Voluntary Restraint Agreement

Photo:toyota-global.com

HELL FREEZES OVER!-Car and Driver

Photo: http://liker.engin.umich.edu/

Mannering and Winston (1991, Brooking papers)

AP Photo/Str

photo: Taj MuttHall Dog Diary

“I believed it was the system that made it bad, not the people.”

- Bruce Lee

Photo:Frank Langfitt/NPR

photo: fendygaze/deviantart

Kaizen

“Never stop the line”

the andon cord

AP photo/Paul Sakuma

Photo: Historic Images Outlet

Other GM Plants?

The Flint sit-down strike against General Motors, Feb. 11, 1937

UAW/FACEBOOK

workers

management

$743mil

$2.5mil

$5.2mil

$35mil

$5mil

$7mil

Jack SmithCEO 1992-2000

Second Round of Changes:

PEOPLE● some team concepts, put together a book

on how each factory should run and why

● a team that went to each factory to implement these changes

● Lots of people in GM still didn't see the need to change. By the late 1990s, the company was posting huge profits selling trucks and SUVs, which made the loss in market share seem less urgent.

First Round of Changes:

PROCESS● Andon cords and inventory control

● No change in culture

● Workers and managers continued their old antagonistic ways. In some of the factories where they installed the andon cord, workers got yelled at when they pulled it. A few plants even cut the cords down.

During Jack Smith’s tenure

reduced duplicity in

organization

invested in Asia/Pacific

1993turned a profit of $2.5 billion

1994earned $4.9

billion

terminated Oldsmobile

brand

Toyota Celebrates 10-Millionth Vehicle Made in Kentucky; First Camry Rolled Off Line at Georgetown Plant in 1988

2015 Consumer

ReportsMost Reliable

Cars

so what?

Conway’s Law

organizations which design

systems ... are constrained

to produce designs which

are copies of the

communication structures

of these organizations

Fourteen Points for Management

Seven Deadly Diseases of Management

Seven Wastes of Software Development

5 Why’s

Two Pillars of the Toyota Production System

how successful are we?

The Machine that Changed the World (James Womack, Daniel Jones, Daniel Roos)

NUMMI, NUMMI 2015 (This American Life, NPR)

...and the internet.

Thank you!

Charlotte Changpushorpull