When I was employed in during the '80's the company changed to a 'new' way of working. Previously we had worked in groups of 2 or 3 following a period of fairly intensive training. Then some bright spark came to the conclusion we had follow 'Total Quality Management' and 'Just in Time' delivery ways of working. Theory being that TQM meant the guy's in the field needed less training and JIT less waste...
So we changed from 6&1/2 hours of productive work a day to around half that...
Most of us used to have quantities of commonly used bits and pieces and spare lengths of cable and wire in our tool chests. With JIT we couldn't use those squirreled away bits and pieces.
TQM meant the 'manager' (who knew sweet FA) had to inspect the paperwork 'Tick Sheets' and check the work we had done before we could move on to the next step.
That delay was often compounded by the JIT deliveries as the TQM rules meant the next delivery of 'stuff' couldn't be delivered until the manager had signed off his part of the paperwork. It was helped when the local company stores didn't have the stuff to send out 'cause JIT stopped at their part of the supply chain.
More times than enough one person would start a job, get sent off to another site 'cause we were waiting on the next delivery, someone else would do the next stage and someone else finish it off. I always seemed to be the person starting the jobs; mainly 'cause I'd have the equipment areas marked out accurately before the initial deliveries were dropped.
It also meant that none of us were particularly bothered how the job was progressed as any pride in doing and finishing a good job was killed by the M&FA associated with TQM/JIT.
Standards certainly went down.
